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HOBBES 

CHAPTER I 

LIFE 

The biographer of the present day knows not whether 
to envy or to pity his predecessors in the seventeenth 
century. The increased advantages bring responsi- 
bilities. The materials available were formerly of 
manageable bulk; nor was it thought necessary to 
emulate scientific procedure by minutely investigating 
a man's " environment " and tracing all the influences 
which moulded his character or the character of his 
ancestors. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, author 
of the Leviathan, was the most conspicuous English 
thinker in the whole period between Bacon and Locke, 
and his long career, described on the. modern scale, 
would certainly have filled at least a couple of portly 
volumes. The actual accounts fill only a few pages. 
They tantalise the reader by many glimpses of a very 
interesting personality. Yet, brief as they are, they 
give perhaps as distinct an impression of the main 
outlines of a notable figure as could have been pro- 
duced by far more elaborate detail. 

Hobbes himself was obviously convinced — I have 
^reasons for hoping that his conviction was well founded 
b 1 



2 HOBBES [chap. 

— that a distant posterity would thirst for information 
about him. At the age of eighty-four he wrote an 
autobiography in Latin elegiacs. Two years later 
.Anthony Wood published his book upon the history 
^ and antiquities of the University of Oxford. Through 
John Aubrey, their common friend, he obtained for 
it an autobiographical notice from Hobbes. Unluckily 
Dr. Fell, Dean of Christchurch, who bore the expense 
of publishing, claimed also the right of editing the 
work. Hobbes's statement that he had spent a certain 
period in scribendo Ubrum, qui nunc non solum in Anglia 
sed in vicinis gentibus notissimus est nomine Leviathan 
was amended by inserting monstrosissimum after Ubrum, 
and publico damno before notissimus. Hobbes was in- 
formed of this and other changes in the same spirit, 
and printed a remonstrance. Fell replied (what it was 
hardly for him to say) that an old man, with one foot 
in the grave, ought not to trouble himself and the 
world about such trifles, and printed at the end of 
the book a contemptuous reply to irritabile illud et va- 
nissimum animal Malmesburiense. The original auto- 
biogr&pJiy«£prtunately remains; it was printed soon 
after Hobbes^death^along with the poem, and a Vitce 
Hobbiance Auctarium{^y^J)Y. Blackbourne) contain- 
ing some further information The Auctarium was 
founded upon the collections wSAubrey, made for the 
benefit of Wood's later book ttfe Athence Oxonienses. 
Aubrey was a personal friend of Hobbes, who came 
from the same county, and did his best to anticipate 
Bos well, though his aspiratioi^s fell for short of suoi 
success. 1 From these and stWry irr^dental refer- 

1 Aubrey's Brief Lives, containiii«Eg^^^es 1 .Jw : fe been care- 
fully edited by Mr. Andrew Clarke.^ 







i.] LIFE 3 

ences, we derive such knowledge of Hobbes as we 
possess ; and in his case, as decidedly as in that of any 
philosopher, a knowledge of the man is very important 
to a fair appreciation of the work. 

In the year 1588 a Thomas Hobbes was vicar of 
Westport, adjoining Malmesbury, and of the neigh- 
bouring parish of Charlton. He married, we are told, 
". . . Middleton of Brokinborough (a yeomanly fam- 
ily) " : but with that information students of heredity 
must be content. The vicar was " one of the ignorant 
Sir Johns of Queen Elizabeth's time : could only read 
the prayers of the Church and the homilies, and dis- 
esteemed learning as not knowing the sweetness of 
it." Another anecdote declares that he was a "good 
fellow," and that after playing cards all Saturday 
night, he went to sleep in church, and in his dreams 
announced to the congregation that clubs were 
trumps. Mrs. Hobbes heard rumours of the Spanish 
Armada, and apparently thought that Malmesbury 
^would be the natural "objective" of an invading 
force. The result was the premature birth of her son i <~J?JP 
Thomas, early in the morning of the 5th of April w^ 
1588. According to Aubrey the time^w^g. well chosen, > m^%jd 
as the child's horoscope, like that of Oji|jer Cromwell, rjtfm^ 
indicated future eminence. Hobb p s himself says thau 
he and terror were born twins. Characteristically he 
speaks of his timidity with a certain complacency, and 
to it he attributes his hatred of his country's foes and 
his love of peace, with the muses and friendly com- 
pany. Not long after his birth his father, " a choleric 
man," was provoked on purpose at the church door by 
" a parson j(which, I think, succeeded him at West- 
port)." So Hobbes the elder struck him and was 



4 HOBBES [chap. 

forced to fly for it. He retired to a vague region 
" beyond London," and there disappears from history. 
Mrs. Hobbes was left at Malmesbury with three 
children, including John, Thomas's senior by two 
years, and a daughter. Fortunately a childless uncle, 
Francis Hobbes, glover and alderman of Malmesbury, 
took charge of the deserted family. Thomas was sent 
to school at Westport church at the age of four, where 
he learnt reading and arithmetic. Thence he passed 
to a school in Malmesbury, and afterwards to one kept 
by a Mr. Latimer, " a good Grecian, and the first that 
came into our parts hereabout since the Reformation." 
Latimer delighted in his scholar, and used to teach him 
with " two or three ingeniose youths more " till nine 
in the evening. Under this excellent master, Hobbes 
worked to such good purpose that at the age of four- 
teen he had translated the Medea of Euripides into 
Latin iambics. He was " playsome enough," though 
he had even then a " contemplative melancholinesse " : 
and he was nicknamed " the crow " on account of his 
black hair. 

The promise which he had shown induced his uncle 
to send him to Magdalen Hall at Oxford. He 
apparently began residence in the beginning of 1603 
'(when he would be just fifteen) but was not admitted 
to his B.A. degree till February 1608. At Oxford he 
can scarcely have fulfilled his uncle's expectations. 
He was one of the many eminent men who acknow- 
ledge but a small debt of gratitude to their university. 
Long afterwards (in his Behemoth) Hobbes intimates 
that the parliamentary commissioners, for whom he 
had otherwise little enough affection, did some good 
by purging the university of men morally unworthy, 



i.] LIFE 5 

as well as of those opposed to them in theology. 
Many parents, he says, had reason to complain that 
their sons were allowed to fall into vicious practices, 
and taught by incompetent tutors little older than 
themselves. The discipline and the studies at the 
Oxford of that period seem, in fact, to have been in 
much need of reform. Hobbes, however, writing in 
his old age, had other causes of quarrel with the 
universities, which he had come to regard as the 
strongholds of obscurantism; and it does not appear 
that, while himself a student, his eyes had been open 
to the evils which he afterwards recognised. 

Magdalen Hall was, during the early part of the 
century, the favourite resort of the Puritans. But 
there is no symptom that Hobbes was at the time 
either attracted or repelled by the religious views of 
his teachers. His account of his studies suggests the 
probable state of the case. He was admitted, he says, 
to the class of logic, and listened eagerly to the dis- 
course of his beardless teacher. He was put through 
the regular Barbara celarent, learnt the rules slowly, 
and then cast them aside, and was permitted to prove 
things after his own fashion. Swift, long afterwards, 
speaks in much the same way of his logical studies 
in Dublin. Then he was taught physics ; the tutor 
explained that all things were composed of matter 
and form; that " species," flying through the air, 
impressed the eye and ear; and attributed much to 
sympathy and antipathy. Hobbes found such things 
above his understanding ; but it did not apparently 
occur to him till a later period that they were unintel- 
ligible because nonsensical. Like many other lads, in 
fact, he found his lessons tiresome ; and he returned to 



6 HOBBES [chap. 

reading the books of which he had already an im- 
perfect knowledge. He took a particular pleasure in 
maps of the world and the stars ; he liked to follow 
the sun in fancy, and to trace the voyages of the great 
circumnavigators, Drake and Cavendish. "He tooke 
great delight" as Aubrey says, "to goe to the book- 
binders' shops and lie gaping on raappes"; but it 
does not appear that the records of the Elizabethan 
sailors inspired him with the usual boyish ambition 
of running away to sea. Aubrey records one other 
amusement. Hobbes told him, in order to prove the 
sharp-sightedness of jackdaws, how he used to tie 
" leaden-counters " with pack-thread, smeared with 
bird-lime and baited with cheese parings. The jack- 
daws would " spy them at a vast distance up in the aire 
and as far as Osney Abbey " and strike at the " baite." 
Athletic sports had not yet organised idleness, but 
Hobbes seems to have found sufficient excuses for not 
attending lectures. The results of his university 
career were so far negative ; but an incident which 
happened soon after his degree, seems to show that 
the authorities thought well of him : well enough, at 
least — for such inferences are not always very safe — 
to declare him fit to be employed by somebody else. 
The -U'3Lcipal of Magdalen Hall recommended him to 
William Cavendish, afterwards first Earl of Devon- 
shire, and Hobbes formed a connection with the 
Cavendish family which was of vital importance to 
his whole career. 

The first conspicuous Cavendish, the Sir William 
who was employed in the visitation of monasteries by 
Henry VIII., and had certain pickings from their 
estates, married Elizabeth, a rich heiress in Derby- 



i.] LIFE 7 

shire, generally known as " Bess of Hardwiek." She 
was an imperious lady, who induced her husband to 
settle in Derbyshire, where she built great houses at 
Hardwiek and Chats worth. She had determined, it 
seems, not to die as long as she could build ; and it 
was only a hard frost, suspending her building opera- 
tions, which induced her to leave the world in 1608 at 
the age of ninety. She had before that time married 
two other husbands, the last being the Earl of Shrews- 
bury, the host or gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots. All 
her fortune, however, went to her second son, William 
Cavendish, who also inherited at a later period the 
estates of his elder brother, and was thus one of the 
richest men in England. In 1618 he became first 
Earl of Devonshire, having bought the title for £10,000 
from James I. In 1608, when Hobbes was leaving 
Oxford, he was father of a son William, afterwards 
second earl, two years younger than Hobbes. Ac- 
cording to Aubrey, the younger William (possibly his 
father), "had a conceit that he should profit more in 
learning if he had a scholar of his own age to wait on 
him than if he had the information of a grave doctor." 
Hobbes became "his lordship's page, and rode a hunt- 
ing and hawking with him and kept his privy purse." 
The " learning " seems to hdve been neglected : He? beg 
almost forgot his Latin; but bought a few books, 
especially a Caesar, which he carried in his pocket and 
read in the lobby "while his lord was making his 
visits." Another note gives a rather unpleasant aspect 
of Hobbes's first position. " His lord," says Aubrey, 
" who was a waster, sent him up and down to borrow 
money and to get gentlemen to be bound for him, 
being ashamed to speak himself." Hobbes, we are 



8 HOBBES [chap. 

told, " took cold, being wet in his feet (then were no 
hackney coaches to stand in the streets), and trod both 
his shoes aside the same way" (whatever that may 
indicate). Notwithstanding, adds Aubrey, he was 
loved for his facetiousness and good-nature. Young 
Cavendish had been married to Christiana, daughter of 
Edward, Lord Bruce of Kinross. James L, who had 
been served by Lord Bruce in the negotiations with 
Cecil which secured his accession to the throne, gave 
the bride £5000. She was only twelve years and 
three months old at her marriage, and the bridegroom, 
who was eighteen, was, for the present, more in need 
of a tutor than a wife. 

In 1610 the two young men made the grand tour, 
visiting France and Italy. 'No record of their adven- 
tures is preserved, but Hobbes says that he brought 
back some knowledge, both of the modern languages 
and of men and manners in the countries visited. It 
was the year in which Henry IV. fell by the knife 
of Eavaillac ; Hobbes mentions the murder once or 
twice in his works ; but it was so apt an illustration 
of his view as to the relation between kings and priests 
that no personal memory need be implied. He brought 
• back one lesson of importance. He discovered that 

the scholastic doctrine, of which he had acquired a 
smattering at Oxford, was everywhere treated with 
contempt by the intelligent, and was passing out of 
fashion. He continued to live with the pupil who 
had now become a friend. For the next eighteen years 
Hobbes was a member of the Cavendish family. These 
J years, he says, were by far the pleasantest of his life, 

' and still (that is when he was eighty-four) revisited 

him in his dreams. His patron allowed him leisure 



i.] LIFE 9 

and provided him with books of all kinds for his 
studies. There was no one, says Hobbes, in whose 
house a man would less need a university. Having 
thrown aside his philosophy, Hobbes began by rubbing 
up his old classical knowledge. He read poets and 
historians with the comments of grammarians, in order 
to acquire the art of writing a clear Latin style, then 
a matter of practical importance for a man of letters. 
He does not mention another study which occupied 
part of the time. Aubrey tells us that he repented 
of having spent two years in reading romances and 
plays, and often lamented this waste of time. It 
might, as Aubrey suggests, " furnish him with copie 
of words." Anyhow, he undertook another task 
which, one can well believe, helped him to acquire 
the clear and forcible style of his English writings. 
This was his translation of Thucydides. He said 
long after that he had learnt from Thucydides how 
much wiser one man is than a body of men, and 
meant to warn his countrymen against trusting 
popular orators. It must be admitted that this 
method of meeting democratic tendencies was de- 
cidedly roundabout. Few people could be expected 
to read the translated book, and those who did, might 
fail to draw the desired inference. Hobbes was pro- 
bably crediting himself with intentions suggested by 
later experience. The introductory remarks show his 
admiration for the skill with which Thucydides has 
made his narrative pregnant with wisdom without 
digressing into lectures. He ridicules the ancient 
critic who assumed that the " scope of history " should 
be "not profit by writing truth, but delight of the 
hearer as if it were a song." He could not have 



10 HOBBES [chap. 

offered better advice to some modern historians. 
Hobbes, we may suppose, was not very much im- 
pressed by the weighty political utterances of the 
great historian, but felt a certain congeniality to his 
owiiintellectual tendencies. Anyhow the attempt to 
straighten out Thucydides' tough sentences into clear 
English was as good practice as could be desired. 
Hobbes had not received such training as is generally 
requisite for fine scholarship, and Jowett, in his 
preface to his own version, says that his predecessor's 
work is very rough and inaccurate, and has been 
praised beyond its merits. I cannot dispute the 
verdict of so high an authority. My readers may 
judge from a short specimen. It is part of the passage 
containing Thucydides' reflections upon the seditions 
in Corcyra, They w r ould have a special interest for the 
author of the Leviathan. 

" And many and heinous things happened in the 
cities through this sedition, which though they have 
been before, and shall be ever as long as human nature 
is the same, yet they are more calm and of different 
kinds according to the several conjunctures. For in 
peace and prosperity as well cities as private men are 
better minded because they be not plunged into 
necessity of doing anything against their will. But 
war, taking away the affluence of daily necessaries, Is 
a most violent master, and conformeth most men's 
passions to the present occasion. The cities therefore 
being now in sedition, and those that fell into it later 
having heard what had been done in the former, they 
far exceeded the same in newness of conceit both 
for the art of assailing, and for the strangeness of 
thfeir revenges. The received value of names im- 



i.] LIFE 11 

posed for signification of things was changed into 
arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness was counted 
true-hearted manliness ; provident deliberation a 
handsome fear ; modesty, the cloak of cowardice ; to 
be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything. A 
furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour. To 
readvise for the better security was held for a fair 
pretext of tergiversation. He that was fierce was 
always trusty ; and he that contraried such a one was 
suspected. He that did insidiate, if it took, was a 
wise man ; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a 
more dangerous man than he. But he that had been 
so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, 
was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that 
stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that 
could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or 
that could persuade another thereto that never meant 
it, was commended." 

Such are the evils, Hobbes would have said, which 
follow when men's passions are let loose by the 
destruction or dislocation of a settled sovereign 
authority. He did not, however, at present set forth 
his own views, and the translation remained for some 
time unpublished. The years that he passed with the 
Cavendishes, the years so fondly remembered, must 
have been in the main devoted to thinking and read- 
ing in the intervals of the duties, whatever precisely 
they may have been, imposed upon him by his relation 
to his patron. His position enabled him to make 
acquaintance with some of the most famous men of 
the day. When Aubrey first met him a few^yaars 
later (1634), his talk ran a good deal upon Ben Jonson 
and Sir Robert Ay ton. Jonson, of course, was then 



12 



HOBBES 



[chap. 




the most far shining of literary lights ; and though 
Ayton, who was related to the wife of Hobbes's patron, 
has fallen into obscurity, he was then regarded as 
an eminent critic and poet. Hobbes submitted his 
Thucydides to these two. A much more interesting 
connection was that with Bacon. Aubrey tells some 
anecdotes which suggest certain chronological diffi- 
culties. Bacon, he says, "used to contemplate in his 
delicious walks at Gorhambury." When a notion 
darted into his mind, he would have it set down by 
one of his attendants, and he often said that Hobbes 
was quicker than any one else at catching his meaning 
and putting it down intelligibly. Aubrey says also 
that Hobbes helped to translate some of Bacon's 
essays, notably that upon the greatness of cities, into 
Latin : the Latin translation was published posthu- 
mously in 1636. Hobbes, too, is Aubrey's ^authority 
fo r the famil iar story of Bacon's death being caused by 
the ex periment of stuffing a fo wl with s now. Bacon 
knew something of Hobbes's patron, and there is 
nothing improbable in the other statements. The 
time at which the meetings took place was probably 
between Bacon's loss of office in 1621 and his death in 
1626. The amount of intercourse must be doubtful. 
One point however is clear. Bacon and Hobbes 
were alike in rejecting the old scholasticism, and in 
being profoundly impressed by the early stages of the 
modern scie ntific movement. But in other respects 
the relation is one of contrast. Bacon's great aim was 
to extend the physical sciences by systematising ex- 
perimental methods. Hobbes, though he incidentally 
notices one of Bacon's experiments, has, as Croom 
Robertson put it, "nothing but scorn for experiment 



i.] LIFE 13 

in physics." His own method is essentially deductive , 
a nd he takes no notice of what is called " Bacon ian 
induction." Hobbes's political theories have no exact 
counterpart in Bacon. Bacon embodied in his various 
writings much statesmanlike reflection, showing the 
deep insight of a keen observer profoundly interested 
in the affairs of the day. Hobbes, as we shall see, 
also watched the political movement of the time, but 
as an outside spectator ; and he constructs an abstract 
theory as dogmatically as his successor and, in some 
degree, his disciple, Rousseau. The contrast of style 
was well put by Sprat, in answer to Sorbiere, who had 
mentioned the personal relation, and inferred an intel- 
lectual affinity. " Bacon," he says, " is short, allusive, 
and abounding in metaphors : Hobbes, round, close, 
sparing of similitudes, but ever extraordinarily decent 
in them. The one's way of reasoning proceeds on 
particulars and pleasant images, only suggesting 
new ways of experimenting without any pretence 
to the mathematics. The other is bold, resolved, 
settled upon general conclusions, and in them (if 
we will believe his friend) dogmatical." Hobbes 
may doubtless have received from his intercourse 
with Bacon some impulse towards his philosophical 
enterprise, but as yet there is no proof of his having 
undertaken to be a philosopher at this early moment 
in his career, and the impulse, when it came, was 
derived from other sources. Other friendships, which 
I shall have to mention, may have begun at this 
period; but for the present Hobbes had made no 
attempt to impress the world, and would only be 
known to others than his immediate friends, as the 
secretary of the Earl of Devonshire. 



14 HOBBES [chap. 

In 1626, on the death of the first earl, Hobbes's 
patron succeeded to the peerage, but died in June 1628. 
During the interval Hobbes wrote a Latin poem, 
giving an account of a short tour in the Peak, made in 
company with the second earl. It was, it appears, a 
new year's gift to his friend, who rewarded him with 
a present of £5. The De Mirabilibus Pecci Carmen 
begins with a description of the beauties of Chatsworth, 
and the early landscape-gardening of " Bess of Hard- 
wick," where "art, dissimulating art," has produced 
sham rocks and streams and fountains. Then he 
describes the ride, in the course of which he and his 
companion see the seven wonders of the Peak : Chats- 
worth itself, the cave called after the devil, Mam Tor, 
Elden Hole, the hot spring, Pool's Cavern, and Buxton 
Well. Hobbe s, it is needless to say, does not antici- 
pate the Wordsworthian cult of Nature; but he is 
a very good specimen of the early sightseer. Elden 
Hole, it seems, was already famous in the days of Queen 
Elizabeth. The Earl of Leicester of that time caused 
a man to be let down into it hanging to a rope, and 
then to drop stones to estimate the remaining depth. 
When drawn up again he was too horror-struck to 
speak intelligibly, was seized with a frenzy, and died 
in a week. I regret to see that recent explorers have 
not spared the romance even of Elden Hole. It is 
only two hundred feet deep, with an inner cave of less 
than a hundred. The party slept at Buxton, where 
they had two baths and a very poor supper (such 
descriptions are an essential part of all mountaineering 
literature), and returned next day to Chatsworth. 
The excursion was, we may guess, one of the incidents 
which revisited Hobbes in the dreams of his old age. 



i.] LITE 15 

Unfortunately the poet, while describing the wonders, 
does not condescend to report the conversation of the 
travellers. 1 

The death of the second earl had serious effects for 
Hobbes. In the " Epistle Dedicatory " prefixed to the 
Thucydides, Hobbes tells the young heir that he is 
bound to dedicate his labour to " rny master now in 
heaven. 7 ' The panegyric upon the dead man which 
naturally follows is honourably free from the exces- 
sive adulation of such documents. Hobbes's sincerity 
is unmistakable. He speaks of the earl's liberality to 
himself, his good sense and freedom from factious 
motives. He gave sound advice and was " one whom 
no man was able to draw or jus tie out of the straight 
path of justice. Of which virtue, I know not whether 
he deserved more by his severity in imposing it (as he 
did to his last breath) on himself, or by his magna- 
nimity in not exacting it to himself from others. No 
man better discerned of men : and therefore was he 
constant in his friendships, because he regarded not 
the fortune nor the adherence but the men, with whom 
also he conversed with an openness of heart that had 
no other guard than his own integrity and that nil 
conscire. To his equals he carried himself equally, and 
to his inferiors familiarly ; but maintaining his respect 

1 De Quincey in his Essay upon Murder as one of the Fine 
Arts, quotes from an anonymous tract of 1670 ("The creed of 
Mr. Hobbes examined "), by Thomas Tenison, afterwards 
archbishop. It describes a meeting with Hobbes at Buxton, to 
which place Hobbes's poem had attracted the author. Hobbes 
has a long dialogue with a student of divinity, and is 
thoroughly confuted. Tenison however states that the intro- 
ductory circumstances as well as the dialogue are purely 
fictitious. 



16 HOBBES [chap. 

fully and only with the native splendour of his birth. 
In sum, he was one in whom it might plainly be per- 
ceived that honour and honesty are but the same thing 
in different degrees of persons." The earl had shown 
some independence during his short tennre of the 
peerage by opposing the Duke of Buckingham. He 
had, however, spent his large revenues too lavishly 
and been obliged to get a private act of Parliament to 
enable him to sell some entailed estates. His death, 
20th June 1628, was said to have been hastened by 
" excessive indulgence in good living." Hobbes 
naturally does not mention this in his dedication ; but 
he suffered from the consequences. 

The widowed countess, left wifch three children, 
the eldest son eleven years old, set about regulating 
her affairs as became her Scottish descent. She was 
an intelligent and energetic woman, admired in later 
years by Edmund Waller and others, and on friendly 
terms with Hobbes. The retrenchments, however, 
which she thought necessary, involved his leaving his 
old situation, and he had to look out for other means of 
support. He accepted the position of travelling tutor 
to the son of Sir Gervase Clinton, of an old Notting- 
hamshire family. A letter from Wotton to Sir 
Thomas Wentworth (4th April 1628) mentions the lad : 
" Pray tell him (Sir G-. Clinton) that when he sent his 
son hither (to Eton of which Wotton was then provost) 
he honoured, and when he took him away he wounded 
us. For in this Royal Seminary we are in one thing 
and only one like the Jesuits, that we all joy when we 
get a spirit upon whom much may be worked." We 
may hope, therefore, that Hobbes had a satisfactory 
pupil. They were abroad for eighteen months. An 



j.] LIFE 17 

undated letter mentions an intended visit to Venice, 
probably prevented by war. Hobbes was now forty, a 
time by which a man's intellect is generally ripe and 
his aspirations tolerably fixed. He had passed years 
in quiet study, and must have been interested in the 
political questions which were becoming daily more 
pressing in England. He must, one supposes, have 
had comparisons suggested to him by the state of 
things in France, where Richelieu was building up the 
great state which most nearly represented his own 
ideal "Leviathan," while in the country of Machia- 
velli he would be led to observe the famous con- 
stitution of Venice, admired by so many of his 
contemporaries as the highest achievement of political 
architecture, and would have his own thoughts about 
the great spiritual power which now occupied the seat 
of the Eoman empire. Hobbes's method, however, 
involves little appeal to observation of particular 
events or to his own personal experience, however 
deeply they may have impressed him. He tells us, 
on the other hand, of one discovery which was cer- 
tainly borne in upon him during this journey, while 
another may probably belong to it or to his next visit 
to the continent. The incidents might as well have 
occurred at London as in Paris. The first is best 
told by Aubrey: "Being in a gentleman's library 
Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47th El. 
libri I. He read the proposition. i By God,' sayd he, 
i this is impossible ' " (he would now and then swear by 
way of emphasis, as Aubrey apologetically notes). " So 
he reads the demonstration of it which referred him 
back to such a proposition : which proposition he read. 
That referred him back to another, which he also read. 



18 HOBBES [chap. 

Et sic deinceps that at last he was demonstratively 
convinced of that truth. This made him in love with 
geometry." The knowledge, it must be admitted, came 
rather late, and the ignorance is not to the credit of 
his early instructors. As I shall have to say, however, 
the effect upon his later speculations was of singular 
importance. The second incident, whenever it hap- 
pened, was equally fruitful. He was at a gathering of 
" learned men," where something was said about sen- 
sation. One of them asked, as in contempt, what was 
sense ? Hobbes thereupon wondered how it happened 
that men who took such pride in the title of " wise " 
could be ignorant of the nature of their own senses. 
Thinking over the matter himself, he remarked that 
if all things were at rest or all moved alike, there 
could be no difference of things and consequently no 
sense. He inferred that the cause of all things must 
be sought in the difference of their movements. This 
again threw him back upon geometry, and led him to 
^rhat he took to be his great discoveries. Such is the 
difference, is his comment, between those who seek for 
truth by their own genius, and those who seek it by 
consulting authority or for purposes of gain. What- 
ever may be thought of his principles, he is certainly 
a remarkable instance of an active mind set at work 
by remarks which others pass by as common-places. I 
shall have to speak hereafter of the essential part which 
these two doctrines played in his later speculation. 1 

1 There are certain difficulties about the date of the conver- 
sation "with learned men" : and the discovery by Dr. Tonnies 
of a ms. treatise in Hobbes's hand, giving an early version of 
his doctrine, rather complicates the question as to the evolution 
of his thought. I need not, however, go into these details. See 
Robertson, p. 35 n. 



i.] LIFE 19 

It is for the present enough to observe that we may 
consider Hobbes as engaged in the elaboration of his 
philosophy from this period. He had hitherto, after 
learning the futility of the Oxford scholasticism, been 
interested in literature and especially in the historians, 
with reference, no doubt, to the political questions of 
the time. He now took up philosophy again from the 
scientific and mathematical side, and elaborated the 
ambitious scheme of which I shall speak presently. 
It implied, as we shall see, that he cast aside authority 
and considered himself to be capable of founding a 
new system of thought by his own unaided genius. 
For a while, however, he had employment which 
must have occupied much of his time. In 1631 he 
was invited to return from Paris to superintend the 
education of the third Earl of Devonshire, the son of 
his old patron or pupil, now about fourteen years of 
age. He was beginning to be absorbed in his new 
studies, but accepted a task which would still leave 
him some leisure, and to which he thought himself 
bound by gratitude to the family. He taught the boy 
industriously, seeking to imbue him " with all such 
opinions as should incline him to be a good Christian, 
a good subject, and a good son." The lessons included 
Latin composition, astronomy, geography, logic, and 
law. An abstract of Aristotle's Rhetoric, which appears 
in his works, was dictated to the pupil in Latin. The 
boy was docile and intelligent, and in later years 
revered and protected his teacher. The recall of 
Hobbes by the countess shows that his discharge had 
not implied disapproval. In later years the son, upon 
coming of age, was dissatisfied with some of his mother's 
dispositions of the estate. Hobbes went into the 



20 HOBBES [chap. 

matter with the son and helped to arrange terms of 
agreement. He persuaded the young man to give up 
the intention of legal proceedings, and to remain in 
his mother's house. In the document which records 
the result, he notes that he has not acted for a reward, 
but simply as discharging the duty of a faithful tutor. 
To this period belongs a correspondence with another 
member of the family, William Cavendish, Earl and 
afterwards Duke of Newcastle, son of a third son 
of " Bess of Hard wick," and first cousin therefore to 
the second Earl of Devonshire. The duke's claim to 
literary glory is founded upon his books upon horse- 
manship, though he also wrote comedies, and colla- 
borated with his second wife, the famous and eccentric 
Margaret, in some of her voluminous plays. He was 
a man of considerable intelligence, who is said to have 
been a patron of Descartes and Gassendi, as well as 
of Hobbes. Hobbes writes to him in January 1633 
about an expected work from Galileo, which he has 
endeavoured to procure for the earl in London. 
Later correspondence shows that Hobbes was employed 
in elaborating his philosophy and counting upon New- 
castle's sympathy. 

In 1634 Hobbes started for his third visit to the 
continent, accompanying his pupil on the usual grand 
tour. They were at Paris in October, and afterwards 
visited Italy, returning again to Paris. This tour 
marks Hobbes's first recognition by philosophical con- 
temporaries. He was at Florence in April 1636, 
anxious, as he says in a letter, to read Heylin's History 
of the Sabbath, and Selden's Mare Clausum. At this 
time, too, he saw Galileo, who had lately made his 
famous recantation, and was living near Florence as a 



i.] LIFE 21 

prisoner of the Inquisition. He was admitted to the 
friendship of the great man, whom he mentions in his 
books with profound respect. Not long afterwards , 
Galil eo had another remar kable English visitor, John 
Milton. What he thought of them we unfortunately 
do not know ; but each of them carried away character- 
istic impressions. During this whole journey Hobbes's 
mind was always employed upon one topic. Whether 
he was in a ship or a carriage or on horseback, he was 
meditating upon the nature of the world, and working 
out the idea which had struck him at that " meeting of 
learned men." There was, he held, but one real thing 
in the world, the basis of all that we falsely take to be 
things, and which are mere phantasms of the brain. 



The one r eali ty is motion,] and to study the modes of 



motion is therefore the necessary condition for all 
successful researches in science. Full of this thought, 
he reached Paris and communicated it to a remarkable 
man who approved and brought it to the notice of 
others. 

Hobbes was fortunate in his new acquaintance. 
Marin Mersenne, a man of his own age, belonged to the 
Friars Minim of the Franciscan Order, and was living 
in a monastery near the Place Eoyale. Before leaving 
the college of La Fleche he had known Descartes, his 
junior by eight years, who had entered the same college 
and already shown his precocity. Some years later 
the acquaintance was renewed, and Mersenne encour- 
aged Descartes to devote his life to study. He became 
Descartes's most trusted and ardent friend, and acted 
as his " plenipotentiary " when Descartes retired to 
Holland. He accepted his friend's doctrines, defended 
him against accusations of heterodoxy, attracted dis- 



22 HOBBES [chap. 

ciples, and effected reconciliations (when possible) with 
enemies. Mersenne_ was himself on friendly terms 
with thinkers of opposite schools. He had some 
scientific ability, and had lately published a transla- 
tion of Galileo's Mechanics, which made the author's 
reputation in France. He appears to have been a man 
of singular simplicity and kindliness of nature, and his 
cell in the monastery became the place of meeting for 
the savants of Paris, and for distinguished strangers. 
He discharged, as Baillet (the biographer of Descartes) 
put it, the same function in the republic of letters as 
the heart discharges in the human body. Hobbes says 
t hat his cell was preferable to all the schoo ls of philo- 
sophers. The star of every art (he becomes quite 
poetical in his enthusiasm) revolved round Mersenne 
as the axis of its orbit. The little constellation of 
shining lights, who in those days were dispelling the 
old darkness and revealing the foundation of modern 
science, was widely scattered, and often its component 
stars were isolated. They had, it is true, the advan- 
tage of a common language ; but there were no 
scientific societies or journals, and to facilitate their 
intercourse, and make each aware of what was being 
done by others, was a valuable service for which 
Mersenne was especially qualified. Hobbes was wel- 
comed by him, and began, as he puts it, "to be 
numbered among the philosophers/' He thus received 
a kind of honorary diploma entitling him to speak 
with authority. He was not loath to accept the 
position. That a man who had not seen Euclid till he 
was forty, and had only taken up philosophy at a later 
period, should claim before he was fifty to be on terms 
of equality with the leaders of thought throughout the 



I-] 



LIFE 



23 



whole range of human knowledge would now seem 
preposterous. But physical science was still in its 
germ, and philosophy, making a fresh start, was pro- 
nouncing study of the old doctrines to be rather an 
encumbrance than an advantage. The field to be 
covered was so small that Hobbes, like Bacon or 
Descartes, might claim to survey the whole intellectual 
world and lay down the law upon things in general. 
Henceforth Hobbes was a man with a mission. He 

m. «• ~ -. _ 4-~~ — , , 

had still to elaborate the details of his creed, but the 
first principles were already clear to him. Before 
dealing with his career as the expounder of a philo- 
sophy, I may make one remark suggested by his 
alliance with Mersenne. Hobbes's ethical theories rTavej 
been condemned as egoistical and cynical ; and it might j 
be inferred that these unpleasant qualities were the 
reflection of his personal character. Of the ethics I 
shall speak hereafter; but the inference as to char- i^jj^w 
acter requires, to say the least, very important 
reservations. It would be altogether unjust to set 
down Hobbes as a man of cold nature. Whether he 
was a man to make any romantic sacrifice to friendship 
may indeed be doubted. Retired philosophers may 
congratulate themselves that they are seldom exposed 
to such trials, and in Hobbes's life the case did not 
occur. But everything goes to show that he was a 
man of kindly, if not of ardent affections. Few men 
appear to have won so many friends or to have retained 
them so permanently. His long connection with the 
Cavendish family proves the existence of a mutual 
esteem creditable to both sides. His language about 
Mersenne is as warm and sincere as his language about 
his early friend the second earl. The friendship with 






■"v> J 



24 HOBBES [chap. 

Mersenne led to an equally warm friendship with 
G-assendi and wjthaoAiax.distingaished men. Hobbes 
got into plenty of controversies, and the philosopher was 
assailed-min^JnttexJy^Mn^any thinker of his time. It 
is the more remarkable that no serious imputation is 
mat!£ upon the man. Clarendon, when confuting h is 
abominable doctrines, declares that Hobbes was one o f 
his oldest friends, and emphatically asserts the personal 
esteem entertained by himself and others for his antag- 
onist. Hobbes seems to have been personally attractive 
to everybody whom he met. He was a pleasant com- 
panion, and clearly had wit enough to be acceptable in 
every circle. But no spiteful sayings are attributed to 
him, and, although he quarrelled over geometry, he 
excited no personal antipathy. Certainly we cannot 
claim for him the posthumous affection which is 
bestowed upon men of the heroic type like his con- 
temporary Milton, or of the saintly type like Arch- 
bishop Leighton. But neither of those eminent 
persons made any mark in philosophical speculation. 
We must admit the excellence for its own purpose of 
more than one type. A man who is above all to be a 
cool reasoner and to shrink from no conclusion forced 
upon him by his logic, is a very valuable person, and 
may be forgiven if his spiritual temperature does not 
rapidly rise to boiling-point and obscure his clearness 
of vision. Hobbes, if one may venture to say so, had 
probably quite as much benevolence as was good for a 
metaphysician. 

Hobbes returned to England in 1637, and began at 
once to compose his exposition. He was still em- 
ployed by his pupil, who came of age in 1638, and in 
1639 he was helping to arrange matters between the 



i.] LIFE 25 

young earl and his mother. To this time also must 
be chiefly referred his intercourse with the remarkable 
group, affectionately commemorated by Clarendon. 
Its most attractive member was Lord Falkland, who 
has won the regard of posterity by the charm of his 
character rather than by any special achievement. He 
lived at Tew, a few miles from Oxford, and, according 
to Clarendon's account, kept open house for all the 
most distinguished members of the university. Among 
the men who could drop in and make free use of his 
table and library, were the divines, Sheldon and 
Morley, afterwards bishops, and Hammond and 
Chilling worth, who died before the E est oration, while 
occasional wits and poets came over from London. 
Whether Hobbes was ever of the party does not 
appear. Falkland, however, according to Aubrey, was 
"his great friend and admirer"; and besides Claren- 
don himself, one who afterwards gave substantial 
proof of his regard was Sidney Godolphin, a poet of 
some reputation. If Hobbes joined the circle, he 
would not find its opinions altogether congenial. 
There was not much love lost between him and actual 
or potential bishops ; and Morley, Sheldon, and Ham- 
mond would be too strictlv orthodox for his taste. 
( Falkland, Chillingworth, and their friend, the "ever] 
} memorable" John Hales, represented a rationalising)^ 
| movement within the church, and were suspected ofj 
\£ socinianism.'i Of one of them, Hobbes made a char- 
acteristic remark to Aubrey. He commended Chilling- 
worth for a very great wit : " But, my God, " said he 
(swearing by way of emphasis again), "he is like some 
lusty fighters that will give a damnable back-blow 
now and then on their own party." Chillingworth's 



^ 



26 HOBBES [chap. 

vigorous logic shows an intellect congenial to that of 
Hobbes himself; but Hobbes would no doubt think 
that his rationalism logically led to opinions lying 
beyond the borders of orthodoxy. In politics there 
was a similar relation. Falkland w as taken by Matthew 
Arnold as embodying the sweet reasonableness which 
condemns extremes on all sides. We hear him still 
"ingeminating peace" after swords were drawn — a 
most amiable but unfortunately a rather futile pro- 
ceeding. He and Clarendo n were constitutionalists, 
opposed equally to the extreme claims of king and 
parliament, though when it became necessary to take a 
side, they preferred the royalist cause. A character- 
istic passage in the Behemoth speaks of the bad advice 
given by men — Hobbes declines to revive old bitter- 
ness by giving their names — wjio believed in " mixe d 
monarchy ," which in reality is pure " anarchy." 

Hobbes might be contrasted with Falkland. Though 
Falkland was moderate enough to see faults on both 
sides, he was ready to fight and indeed to throw away 
his life for the side which was least to blame. Hobbes 
had no doubt upon political or any other questions ; 
but he was quite clear that he would fight for neither 
side. Fighting he might fairly urge had never been 
his trade, and he was clearly too old to take it up. 
Meanwhile political controversy was raging with in- 
creasing bitterness, and must have occupied the 
thoughts of every one with whom Hobbes might con- 
verse. No doubt eager discussions were going on in 
the Falkland circle. Hobbes conceived that he had 
something to say of considerable importance, and pro- 
bably exaggerated the attention which logic was likely 
to receive in the disturbed atmosphere. 



i.] LIFE 27 

The exaction of ship-in'oney in 1637 had led to 
the famous proceedings against Hampden, and the 
decision against him in 1638. The Scots were be- 
coming restive under the imposition of the new 
liturgy ; they were swearing to the covenant in 1638 ; 
and in 1639 a Scottish army was successfully resisting 
the king, and receiving the sympathy of the popular 
party in England. Charles was forced to appeal to a 
parliament in April 1640, after eleven years, during 
which that troublesome body had been suspended. 
Men were discussing fundamental political principles, 
and ready to settle them by an appeal to the sword. 
It was time, thought Hobbes, to speak out. He had 
formed and begun to execute a remarkable plan. He 
intended, like a sound logician, to lay down the first 
principles of all scientific inquiry, to apply them to 
what we should now call psychology, setting forth the 
laws of human nature, and finally to found upon this 
basis a science corresponding to modern sociology. He 
now dropped the first part and wrote a little treatise in 
two sections, omitting the first principles, but giving 
first a summary of his psychology, and secondly his 
political doctrine. The treatise was circulated in 
manuscript and occasioned much talk of the author. 
Had it not been for the dissolution of the Short 
Parliament, it would, as he thought, have brought him 
into danger of his life. The Long Parliament, how- 
ever, which met in November, ready to fall upon 
Strafford, might find time also to deal with the author 
of this treatise. 

Hobbes, " doubting how they would use him, went 
over into Prance the first of all that fled, and there 
continued eleven years, to his damage some thousands 



28 HOBBES [chap. 

of pounds deep." It does not appear how he arrived 
at this estimate. Few other men would have prided 
themselves on being the first to run away, and it 
may be doubted whether it proved, as he apparently 
thought, his foresight, or implied an erroneous appre- 
ciation of the danger. The treatise is undoubtedly a 
remarkable book, and gives the pith of his most 
characteristic teaching. Still he avoids so carefully 
any direct reference to any passing event that it 
might have failed to attract notice. Hobbes might 
surely have given credit to members of parliament for 
sufficient stupidity to overlook logical implications. 
If indeed they thought him worth punishing, no weak 
crotchet about liberty of the press would have re- 
strained them. The House of Commons was quite 
ready to suppress objectionable writers. Hobbes him- 
self says he was preaching the same doctrine as Bishop 
Man waring. Manwaring had been a victim of the 
parliament of 1628, for sermons attributing absolute 
authority to the king. When the parliament was 
dissolved the king had pardoned and preferred him, 
and the Short Parliament found time to fall upon him 
again and send him to the Tower. H obbes's treatis e 
argues that the " sovereignty " is one and indivisible, 
and necessarily carries with it the right to make peace 
or war and to levy taxes. Sovereignty, as he truly 
says, was then admitted to be in the king, and it 
follows that Charles could raise ship-money or what- 
ever taxes he pleased. If parliament were equal to 
drawing that inference, and thought Hobbes's treatise 
of sufficient importance, they would have little scruple 
about applying the arguments directed against Man- 
waring. 



i.] LIFE 29 

Hobbes's political theory was fully formed before $ 
the outbreak of the war. He watched the events 
with interest, but of course knew beforehand that 
they would only confirm hi s theory. That result is 
sufficiently set forth in the \Beliemoth — a history of 



the period, written in 1668, to explain the causes of_ 



the rebellion. I The book has a certain interest at this 



point in throwing some light upon Hobbes's sympa- 
thies when the war was actually raging. Hobbes was 
not yet a historical philosopher to the point of scien- 
tific impartiality. He too often, like many better 
historians, finds it enough to explain events by the 
wickedness of the other side. That agreeable theory 
is an excuse for not attempting to discover the causes 
of discontent ; a wicked man wants no cause. He 
gives occasionally a quaint enough argument. The 
king's soldiers were as stout as their enemies, but 
could not fight so keenly "because their valour was 
not sharpened so with malice." To this he adds the 
additional reason that there were many raw London 
apprentices in the parliamentary army "who would 
have been fearful enough of death approaching visibly 
in glistening swords ; but, for want of judgment, 
scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a 
bullet, and therefore were very hardly to be driven 
out of the field." Hobbes had clearly not been under 
fire. 

He had plenty to say that is more to the purpose, 
and expressed with his usual terse and pointed style. 
One line of remark is characteristic. A letter to the 
Earl of Devonshire, in August 1641, discusses a peti- 
tion against bishops. Hobbes thinks that it proves 
the existence of many abuses, and heartily approves 



J 



30 HOBBES [chap. 

of a proposal to give more authority to the laity. 
" Ministers," he thinks, " should minister rather than 
govern." Experience teaches that "the dispute 
between the spiritual and the civil power has of late, 
more than anything in the world, been the cause of 
civil wars in all places of Christendom." He already 
holds the view which becomes prominent in the 
Behemoth. He starts with a long comparison of the 
claims of the Papacy and their evil results ; only at 
the end he remembers that, however many crimes the 
popes may have committed, they are scarcely to be 
accused of having prompted the Puritan revolt. The 
Papists, he has to explain, would not be sorry for 
disorders that might possibly clear the way for the 
restoring of the pope's authority. The Puritans are 
most clearly responsible. " After the Bible was trans- 
lated in English, every man, nay every boy and 
woman, thought they spoke with God Almighty and 
understood what He said, when by a certain number 
of chapters a day they had read the Scriptures once or 
twice over." They lost their reverence for the bishops, 
and were supported by the gentry, who desired popular 
government in civil matters as non-conformists did 
in ecclesiastical. Thus supported, the presbyterian 
preachers went on to declaim against tyranny. They 
played the part of " right godly men as skilfully as 
any tragedian in the world." They took care indeed 
not to inveigh against the lucrative vices, such as 
lying, cozening, and hypocrisy, "which was a great 
ease to the generality of citizens and the inhabitants 
of market towns, and no little profit to themselves." 
" The inhabitants of market towns " were already 
fertile in the Stigginses of the period. Hobbes detests 



i.] LIFE 31 

the Presbyterians more than the Independents ; for 
the Presbyterian claimed a spiritual authority over the 
State for his own church; still his preaching led to 
the multiplication of sects. " There was no so 
dangerous an enemy to the Presbyterians as this 
brood of their own hatching." The Rump, he observes, 
voted liberty of conscience to the sectaries and so 
" plucked out the sting of presbytery," a feat which 
was personally useful to Hobbes himself. Meanwhile 
the established church had its faults. The clergy in 
general thought that the pulling down of the pope 
was the setting up " of them in his place." Their 
doctrine of apostolical succession implied that their 
"spiritual power did depend not upon the authority 
of the king but of Christ himself." He admits that 
Laud was a " very honest man," but intimates that he 
was a very poor statesman for mixing state affairs 
with his " squabblings in the university about free 
will, and his standing upon punctilios concerning the 
service book and its rubrics." 

Though an absolutist in politics, Hobbes can cor- 
dially denounce persecution. " A state can constrain 
obedience but convince no error, nor alter the mind of 
them that think they have the better reason. Sup- 
pression of doctrines does but unite and exasperate : 
that is, increase both the malice and the power of them 
that have already believed them." Persecution results 
from the desire of the spiritual power to enforce the 
dogmatic systems learnt in the schools. "Religion 
has been generally taken for the same thing with 
divinity (that is, with metaphysical theology), to the 
great advantage of the clergy." Though the transla- 
tion of the Bible did mischief, he approves of it on the 



-^^v 



32 HOBBES [chap. 

whole. The Bible teaches good morality in the easiest 
words. The mischief resulted from the use of the 
Scriptures in controversies over mysteries. It is only 
when the State is subordinate to the Church that 
abstract dogmas will be enforced by law, and it is only 
in Christian countries that there have been wars of 
religion, because there men have been encouraged to 
wrangle and harangue upon such points. The intro- 
duction of this scholastic dogmatism is a main count 
in his indictment against the universities. "The 
universities have been to this nation as the wooden 
horse was to the Trojans." They are the "core of 
rebellion." It might have been said that the revival 
of classical literature was a point in their favour. But 
that only suggests another charge. They taught men 
to argue "for liberty out of the works of Aristotle, 
Plato, Cicero, and Seneca, and out of the histories of 
Some and Greece " — not, it would seem, paying proper 
attention to Thucydides. Things will never be well 
till they are reformed and made to teach absolute 
obedience to the laws of the king " and his public 
edicts under the great seal of England " : that is, as 
one of his opponents sneered, till the Leviathan has 
become the accepted text-book. 

Hobbes on reaching Paris had renewed his old rela- 
tions with Mersenne, and his first bit of work was a 
return to purely philosophical activity. Descartes had 
published his famous treatise on Method in 1637, and 
was now about to follow it up by the Meditations, 
Mersenne had submitted the book before publication 
to various learned men who were to offer criticisms 
which, with Descartes's replies, might be expected to 
throw light upon any obscurities in the new system. 



i.] LIFE 33 

Hobbes came just in time to join in this operation. 
He put certain objections briefly and bluntly, and 
they are of much interest as illustrating his own rela- 
tion to Descartes. But they did not answer the 
intended purpose. Descartes had expected, and he 
more or less received from others, the rare and useful 
kind of criticism which comes from thinkers who are 
sufficiently in sympathy with their author to draw 
from him additional explanations of his thought and 
help him to round off and perfect his exposition. But 
Hobbes differed radically. The controversy very 
rapidly reached the point at which flat contradiction 
takes the place of friendly argument, and Descartes 
did not like contradiction for its own sake any more 
than any other philosopher. Instead of a partial ally 
he found a dogged opponent, and one who thought 
himself entitled to speak with fully equal authority. 
Descartes naturally became convinced that Hobbes 
was a very poor philosopher. There was not, he said, 
a single sound conclusion in the objections. Matters 
did not improve when Mersenne forwarded to Des- 
cartes certain objections to his Dioptrique. In order to 
secure a fair hearing, Mersenne concealed the fact that 
these objections also were made by Hobbes. Descartes 
did not suspect the little artifice, but did not like the 
new objections any better. He would, he said, have 
nothing more to do with the Englishman. At a later 
period Descartes admitted that Hobbes was a more 
competent writer upon political problems than upon 
metaphysical and mathematical questions, although 
his political principles were morally objectionable. 
He held that all men were wicked and gave them 
ground for wickedness. Hobbes on his side, according 



~ — 



34 HOBBES [chap. 

to Aubrey, had a "high, respect" for Descartes, but 
thought that " his head did not lie for philosophy " : 
he ought to have confined himself to geometry. He 
could not pardon him for writing against his con- 
science in defence of " transubstantiation in order to 
please the Jesuits." This unsatisfactory encounter did 
not long detain Hobbes. His interest in the political 
issues of the civil war continued, and his thoughts 
were for ten years "much or almost altogether 
unhinged from the mathematics." The first result of 
his meditations was the De Give (1642), which is sub- 
stantially a remodelling of the political part of the 
"little treatise." It was written in Latin, by way 
apparently of implying that it was intended for the 
philosophical world of Europe, and only a small 
number of copies was printed. 

Hobbes then began the composition of his most 
famous work, the Leviathan. This time he used his 
native language, and meant, it is to be presumed, 
to catch the attention of the politicians who were 
remoulding the constitution of his own country. The 
Leviathan, like the early treatise, covers the second 
and third parts of his general plan, the first principles 
being again postponed. It is always easy to supply 
first principles when you have settled your conclusions. 
One characteristic may be noted. In the first treatise 
he had asserted his principle of the subordination of 
the Church to the State. This argument, however, 
was greatly expanded in the De Cive, and now in 
the Leviathan fills a still larger space. For whatever 
reason, Hobbes's antipathy to the claims of the spiritual 
powers, whether Catholic or Presbyterian, had been 
growing in intensity. The Leviathan, which Hobbes 



i.] LIEE 35 

hoped, and not without reason, would make an epoch 
in political speculation, was carefully and slowly 
written. Aubrey describes his method. " He walked 
much and .contemplated ; and he had in the head of 
his staff a pen and ink horn ; carried always a note- 
book in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, 
he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise he 
might perhaps have lost it. He had drawn the design 
of the book into chapters, etc., so that he knew 
whereabouts it would come in." The composition took 
some years, during which, one would suppose, Hobbes 
must have been often in financial straits. Mersenne's 
failure to bring him into friendly relations with 
Descartes did not prevent the continuance of his 
own friendship. Another conspicuous member of the 
Mersenne circle, held to be only second to Descartes, 
was Gassendi. He settled in Paris as professor of 
mathematics in 1645, and became a warm friend. 
Hobbes called Gassendi the " sweetest-natured man in 
the world," and Gassendi expressed the highest ad- 
miration for Hobbes's writings. A less distinguished 
acquaintance, Sorbiere, was rather a hanger-on than a 
member of the circle. He wrote books upon medical 
topics, and vainly tried to get patronage from the 
pope for his conversion from protestant error, but 
neither the pope nor other observers seem to have 
considered him as particularly edifying. Meanwhile 
he boasted of his friendship for Gassendi, whose life 
he wrote. He also professed admiration for Hobbes, 
who allowed him to publish a definitive edition of the 
De Cive at Amsterdam. It was delayed until 1647, 
when it came out accompanied by two most enthusi- 
astic letters of commendation from his friends Mer- 



=■£*-*,;**- 



36 HOBBES [chap. 

senne and Gassendi. Of one other friend and warm 
admirer we know little. This was Du Verdus, a noble 
of Languedoc. They had become so intimate that 
Hobbes was about to give up all hopes of returning 
to England, and to settle with Du Verdus in the 
country, when a new career seemed to open for him 
on the arrival of the Prince of Wales in Paris. 

English refugees had been following the first fugi- 
tive. The Cavendish family had taken the royalist 
side. Hobbes' s pupil, the third earl, had been im- 
peached in 1642, and escaped to the continent. He 
returned to England in 1645, submitted to the parlia- 
ment, and lived in retirement at Latimers in Bucking- 
hamshire till the Restoration. His younger brother, 
Charles, had distinguished himself on the king's side 
at Edgehill, but was killed in an encounter with 
Cromwell in 1643. Their mother, Christiana, remained 
in England, and her house was a meeting-place of 
the royalist party, by whom she was fully trusted. 
Their cousin, the Earl of Newcastle, commanded the 
king's forces in the north, and when his army, then 
led by Prince Rupert, was crushed at Marston Moor, 
he left England and reached Paris in the spring of 
1645. He stayed there three years, and his presence 
was, no doubt, important to Hobbes. His wife repeats 
a conversation between them, at which Newcastle 
spoke sceptically of witchcraft, and according to 
her, suggested a passage to the same effect in the 
Leviathan. Possibly the lady was claiming a little too 
much for her husband. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, 
had escaped with Newcastle, and had a discussion with 
Hobbes about free will at the house of the marquis 
(as he had now become). Each of the disputants 



i.] LIFE 37 

afterwards put his arguments in writing; but Hoobes 
desired that his paper should be kept private. He 
had allowed a copy to be taken for a friend, which 
was afterwards published without his consent, with 
results to be presently noticed. Edmund Waller told 
Aubrey that he had met Hobbes, Gassendi, and 
Descartes dining together at the marquis's table in 
Paris. With the marquis at this time was his 
brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, who had been pre- 
vented by deformity from bearing arms, and had 
taken to mathematics. He collected, says Aubrey, as 
many mathematical mss. as filled a hogshead, intending 
to publish them. But he died " of the scurvy con- 
tracted by hard study/' and his papers, falling into 
ignorant hands, were sold by weight to the paste- 
board makers. Petty mentions Hobbes's kindness in 
introducing him to the two brothers. Petty, most 
versatile and ingenious of men, was thirty-five years 
younger than Hobbes. He was precocious from 
childhood, and at this juncture was in Paris with 
an introduction to Hobbes from the English mathe- 
matician Pell. Petty helped Hobbes by drawing 
figures for his optical propositions ; and the two 
joined in reading Vesalius's anatomy. Petty was soon 
afterwards lecturing on anatomy at Oxford. The 
economic writings by which he is remembered, show 
marked traces of Hobbes's political influence. About 
this time, 1646, Clarendon, writing at Jersey on his 
way to Holland, sent a message to Hobbes asking for 
the De Cive, and told him that their common friend, 
Sidney Godolphin, slain at Chagford in the beginning 
of 1645, had left him a bequest of £200. Hobbes 
received £100, with a promise of the rest from 



38 HOBBES [chap. 

Godolphin's brother, to whom, though personally 
unknown, he dedicated the Leviathan in gratitude. 
At the end of the book he makes a striking reference 
to his friend. " I have known clearness of judgment 
and largeness of fancy, strength of reason and grace- 
ful elocution, a courage for the war and a fear for the 
laws and all eminently in one man; and that was my 
most noble and honoured friend, Mr. Sidney Godol- 
phin, who, hating no man, nor hated of any, was 
unfortunately slain in the beginning of the late civil 
war, in the public quarrel, by an undiscerned and 
undiscerning hand." The bequest must have been 
welcome. It was not so easy to make communications 
or send remittances, and Hobbes only heard of his 
legacy by the accident of Clarendon's letter, some 
little time after Godolphin's death. The Cavendishes 
had plenty of calls upon their money, and had other 
things to think of than Hobbes's fortunes. 

The gathering of the exiles at Paris naturally led 
to Hobbes's appointment to be mathematical tutor to 
the Prince of Wales. It was, we may suppose, not a 
very splendid post if regarded from a pecuniary point 
of view. Newcastle had been for a time the prince's 
" governor," and had drawn up a paper of instructions, 
superfluously advising that the boy should not be too 
devout, " and should be very civil to women." He 
might now naturally recommend his friend Hobbes, 
whose qualifications were indeed ample. Mersenne 
had published some of his scientific speculations. 
Pell had at this time confuted one Longomontanus, 
who claimed to have squared the circle ; and Hobbes 
was invited along with Descartes and other leading 
mathematicians, including Sir Charles Cavendish, to 



i.] LIFE 39 

pronounce an opinion upon the controversy. How 
far he succeeded in impressing the prince with his 
reverence for Euclid does not appear. At a later 
time the conjunction was regarded as fraught with 
disastrous consequences. Burnet scented a diabolical 
plot. The Duke of Buckingham, such was the sug- 
gestion, desired to corrupt Charles's morals and 
principles. Buckingham would be in no need of help 
in the moral department, but he introduced Hobbes 
to inculcate " political and religious schemes," which 
made a deep impression upon the pupil, " so that the 
main blame of the King's ill principles and bad morals, 
was owing to the Duke of Buckingham." As a matter 
of fact, Hobbes states in a letter to Sorbiere that he 
was confined to mathematical teaching, the prince 
being too young for philosophy. It would be more 
plausible to attribute to his influence Charles's most 
creditable peculiarity — a certain interest in science. 
Ill principles were abundant enough in the atmo- 
sphere of the court. The connection lasted at most 
for two years, as Charles came to Paris in 1646, and 
left it for Holland in the spring of 1648. He retained, 
however, a friendly feeling for his tutor. ' The new 
edition of the De Cice was now on the point of publi- 
cation, and Sorbiere, in 1647, proposed to describe 
Hobbes on the title-page as tutor to the Prince of 
Wales. Hobbes objected in a remarkable letter. The 
connection of the writer may do harm to the prince, 
as suggesting that he approves Hobbes's principles. 
Courtiers may accuse him of vanity. Finally he may 
think of returning to England if peace is established 
in any way. He did not, he said, belong to the house- 
hold, and apparently found it already uncongenial. 



----- 



40 HOBBES [chap. 

Hobbes's teacliersliip was interrupted, if not ter- 
minated, by a severe illness which brought him to the 
point of death in 1647. He gives a characteristic 
anecdote in regard to it. Mersenne was called in by 
a common friend, who feared that Hobbes would die 
outside of the Roman communion. Mersenne accord- 
ingly came and began a discourse upon the power of 
his church to remit sins. " Father," said Hobbes, "I 
have long gone over that question in my own mind. 
You have something pleasanter to say. When did 
you see Gassendi ? " Mersenne dropped the subject. 
Soon afterwards Cosin, afterwards Bishop of Durham, 
offered his services, and Hobbes received the sacrament 
from him according to the Anglican rite: a great 
proof, he observes, of his reverence for the episcopal 
discipline. Aubrey gives a very different version of 
the story. When divines came to him in this illness, 
he said, " Let me alone, or else I will detect all your 
cheats from Aaron to yourselves." But Hobbes's own 
account must be preferred. Mersenne died in Sep- 
tember 1648, after great suffering under the hands of 
blundering surgeons. Hobbes continued to work at 
his political writings. In 1650 he published or 
allowed the publication of the little treatise which had 
remained for ten years in manuscript, and in 1651 he 
published an English translation of the De Cive. The 
poet Waller had offered to translate it before, but 
having asked Hobbes to translate part by way of 
model, declined to undertake a task which, as he 
sensibly judged, could be executed by no one so well 
as the author himself. These two books were fore- 
runners of the Leviathan, which was printed in London, 
and appeared in the middle of 1651. In August 



i.] LIFE 41 

Hobbes had another illness, of which the shrewd and 
learned physician, Gui Patin, gives a lively account. 
He was called in to see Hobbes, whom he describes as 
stoical, melancholy, and outre cela Anglais. Naturally, 
therefore, he had been thinking of suicide ; Englishmen 
have a turn that way. He refused to be bled : the 
remedy for almost all diseases according to Patin. 
Next day, however, he gave in, to his great benefit. 
They at once became carnarades et grands amis ; and 
Patin allowed him to drink as much small beer as he 
liked. Hobbes was in the habit of saying that he 
would prefer an old woman who had been at many bed- 
sides to the u learnedst young unpractised physitian." 
The fate of his friend Mersenne may have weakened 
his faith in the faculty. Two months after his re- 
covery Charles reached Paris after his final defeat at 
Worcester, and Hobbes speedily presented him with a 
manuscript copy of the Leviathan, " engrossed in vellum 
in a marvellous fair hand. 7 ' It is now to be seen in 
the British Museum. 

The immediate consequence was that Hobbes had 
to retreat to England, and became the object of 
accusations which require notice, not because they 
are plausible but because they illustrate his position 
at the time. Wallis, in a controversy with Hobbes 
after the Eestoration, declared that the Leviathan 
was "writ in defence of Oliver's title." Claren- 
don reports that he talked with Hobbes shortly 
before the book was published. Hobbes showed him 
some sheets and spoke of his opinions. Clarendon 
asked how he could publish such doctrine ? After a 
"discourse between jest and earnest," Hobbes replied: 
"The truth is I have a mind to go home." Conver- 



42 HOBBES [chap. 

sations between jest and earnest reported twenty 
years later are unsatisfactory evidence, and it is more 
likely that the grave Clarendon failed to see a joke 
than that Hobbes meant to make such a confession. 
To Wallis he made a sufficient answer. Cromwell 
did not become protector till 1653, and it could 
not be known in 1650 that he was the right person 
to flatter. But besides this the argument of the 
Leviathan was certainly not modified in order to 
please either Cromwell or the Rump, to which for 
the present he was subordinate. The principles are 
identical with those of the early treatise and the 
Be Give written long before; and since they were 
not modified at all, they were not modified in order 
to curry favour with anybody. Things, it is true, 
had changed, and it might be suggested that the 
defence of the absolute power of the sovereign was 
applicable to parliament, when it became sovereign, 
as it had once been applicable to the king. But 
parliament would certainly not admit that only by 
success were its claims justified, or approve of a 
doctrine which condemned the whole rebellion. In 
any case it is scarcely fair to blame Hobbes, who 
laid down a perfectly consistent doctrine from first to 
last, if a change of circumstances made the doctrine 
agreeable to a new order. The truth is, I take it, 
that his view was one which could not be openly 
avowed even by Cromwellians or by royalists. The 
more they might act in accordance with it, the more 
anxious they would be to disavow it. 

There was, however, one part of the Leviathan 
which might be a stumbling-block. In a Review 
and Conclusion he briefly considered the question, 



i.] LIFE 43 

at what time does a subject become obliged to a 
conqueror ? He answers that " it is when the means 
of his life are within the guards and garrisons of 
the enemy." Submission, therefore, to a de facto 
government is right ; and Hobbes adds that such 
submission is not even an assistance to the new 
power, which would otherwise confiscate an oppo- 
nent's whole property instead of taking a part. This 
was a convenient argument. In 1656 Hobbes could 
take credit for the influence of the Leviathan in 
framing "the minds of a thousand gentlemen to a 
conscientious obedience to the present government 
(Cromwell's), which otherwise would have wavered 
in that point." In 1662 he looks at the question 
from the other point of view, and remembers that 
by "compounding" they diminished the plunder of 
the usurper, and in due time would be better able 
to serve the king. That was the case of many 
honourable persons, including, it may be observed, 
Hobbes's own patron the Earl of Devonshire. No 
moralist, I suppose, would deny that such submission 
becomes right in time. Nobody could blame an 
elderly scholar, who had no position under the 
exiled king, for settling down quietly in his native 
country and justifying the same action in his friend's 
case. No doubt, however, the doctrine gave offence 
to those who held out. "Mr. Hobbes," writes Sir 
Edward Nicholas in February 1652, "is at London 
much caressed as one that hath by his writings 
justified the reasonableness and righteousness of their 
arms and actions." Hobbes had certainly not done 
that ; but the royalist might be scandalised when an 
eminent writer, who had previously been the king's 



44 HOBBES [chap. 

tutor, defended submission to the powers in existence, 
and so far admitted the cause to be hopeless. How 
far he was " caressed " does not appear. He certainly 
got nothing from the government, and he had very 
sufficient reasons for leaving France. 

Nicholas was then in Holland and previous notes 
of his are significant. "All honest men here," he 
says in January, "are very glad that the K. hath 
at length banished from his court that father of 
atheists, Mr. Hobbes, who, it is said, hath rendered 
all the queen's court, and very many of the D. of 
York's family atheists, and if he had been suffered, 
would have done his best to have likewise poisoned 
the king's court." A very few days later he regrets 
that Papists " (to the shame of the true Protestants) 
were the chief cause that that grand atheist was 
sent away." He mentions, but declines to believe, 
a report that the Marquis of Ormonde was very 
slow in signifying the king's command to Hobbes 
to forbear coming to court. Clarendon, who seems 
to have had some part in the expulsion, had now 
read the printed book and told Hobbes that " such a 
book would be punished in any country in Europe." 
He says that Hobbes had to "fly secretly, the justices 
having endeavoured to apprehend him." Hobbes him- 
self says that the Anglican prelates had found fault 
with the theology of his book, and that he was in 
fear of the Catholic clergy, whose church he had 
certainly attacked. Whether Hobbes could rightly 
be called an atheist is a question to be noticed here- 
after. His friend Mersenne had declared some years 
before that there were some 50,000 atheists in Paris 
alone, and that twelve might be often found in one 



i.] LIFE 45 

house. As there was no religious census at the time 
the numbers must be considered as distinctly con- 
jectural. "Atheism," however, is a word which could 
be and was used simply as a missile to be hurled 
at anybody morally or philosophically objectionable. 
Both Hobbes's friends, Gassendi and Mersenne, were 
Catholic ecclesiastics who discharged their functions 
regularly, and Gassendi maintained fhat his admira- 
tion for Epicurus was consistent with thorough 
orthodoxy. Hobbes can hardly have talked atheism 
to them, and the anecdote about Mersenne and Bishop 
Cosin, to which he refers so complacently, seems to 
imply that he was as reticent as might be expected 
from his timidity. Perhaps he had been more out- 
spoken among the courtiers, and, at any rate, the 
attacks upon the spiritual power in his two last 
books meant an attitude towards the Church which 
might well suggest "atheism," as Mersenne under- 
stood the word, even to candid critics. Certainly 
he had said enough to shock the Catholic authori- 
ties, and his fear of their action was natural. Besides 
this, he tells us that he was frightened by the murder 
of the two English envoys in Holland and Spain, 
Dorislaus and Ascham. He was in an awkward 
position. Charles, he admits, was set against him. 
The young king "trusted in those in whom his 
father had trusted," says Hobbes. Hobbes was 
hardly called upon to stay in a place where his 
countrymen and the native authorities agreed in 
considering him to be an atheist, and held atheism 
to be not only damnable but criminal. 

He was glad to escape to England in a severe 
winter, and suffering from his infirmities, and to 



46 HOBBES [chap. 

settle among old friends in a land where he was at 
least permitted to publish his writings. Three months 
later (as he declared) he went more than a mile to 
take the sacrament according to the Anglican rite. 
He made his submission to the Council of State and 
remained for the rest of his life in England. In 1653 
he again became a member of the Earl of Devonshire's 
family. The earl, though living in retirement at 
Latimers in Buckinghamshire, also occupied "Little 
Salisbury House" in London, Hobbes complained 
that, although the earl had a good library and pro- 
vided his old tutor with all the books he wanted, a 
country life gave small opportunities for " learned 
conversation." One's understanding, Aubrey said, as 
Johnson might have said, "grows mouldy." He 
appears to have spent most of his time in London, 
and, as at all periods of his life, cultivated the 
friendship of the most distinguished contemporaries. 
He was on intimate terms with the best known poets, 
Waller, Cowley, and Davenant. Milton would not 
be a congenial friend. In his last year at Paris he 
had been very intimate with Davenant, who was then 
writing the first cantos of his ponderous epic Gondibert. 
He submitted it as it was written to Hobbes, and 
addressed a very long preface to his friendly critic. 
Hobbes replied in a letter which was printed as an 
appendix to the preface. It is superfluous to say that 
each expresses a very high opinion of the other's 
merits. I need not dwell upon Hobbes's aesthetic 
doctrine. " A poet," he says, " ought to know well, 
and to know much " : a sign of the first is " perspi- 
cuity, propriety, and decency " ; a sign of the second 
is " novelty of expression, which pleaseth by excitation 






i.] LIFE 47 

of the mind, for novelty causeth admiration and 
admiration curiosity, which is a delightful appetite 
of knowledge." He ends by a spirited protest against 
Davenant's depreciation of old age as second child- 
hood. " That saying, meant only of the weakness 
of the body, was wrested to the weakness of mind by 
froward children, weary of the controlment of their 
parents, masters, and other admonitors." The dotage 
of age is " never the effect of time but sometimes of 
the excesses of youth." " Those who pass their youth 
in making provision only for their ease and sensual 
delight are children still at what years soever : as 
they that coming into a populous city, never going 
out of their inn, are strangers still, how long soever 
they have been there." There is, moreover, "no 
reason for any man to think himself wiser to-day than 
yesterday, which does not equally convince he shall 
be wiser to-morrow than to-day." Davenant will love 
to change his opinion when he becomes old, and 
"meanwhile you discredit all I have said before in 
your commendation because I am old already." 
Hobbes was not quite sixty-two when he wrote this 
and was to live nearly thirty years longer. He did 
his best to act up to his encouraging but rather 
questionable doctrine, and took the approach of old 
age with all possible gallantry. Old age was then 
considered to begin at a comparatively early period, 
and Hobbes, in spite of the antagonism which he 
excited, enjoyed some of its privileges. Cowley's 
ode to him written some years later touches the 
point : 

11 Xor can the snow which now cold age does shed, 
Upon thy reverend head 



/ 



48 HOBBES [chap. 

Quench or allay the noble fires within, 

But all which thou hast been 

And all that youth can be thou' rt yet, 

So fully still dost thou 

Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of wit 

And all the natural heat but not the fever too." 

A phenomenon which is accounted for in the familiar 
lines : 

" To things immortal time can do no wrong, 
And that which never is to die for ever must be young." 

Cowley says that the scholastic philosophy, of which, 
as his poems show he had made some study, was now 
dead, and that Hobbes is the great "Columbus of 
the golden land of new philosophies." Hobbes's three 
poetical friends had probably all known him in France. 
Waller had an unfortunate facility for turning his coat, 
and came back about the same time as Hobbes ; he 
was pardoned and then patronised by Cromwell, and 
afterwards reconciled himself to Charles II. Davenant 
finished his Gondibert in the Tower, but was after- 
wards allowed to revive theatrical performances before 
the Eestoration. Cowley, who had been trusted in 
confidential employment by Henrietta Maria, was 
suspected, like Hobbes, of a disposition to reconcile 
himself to the actual authorities, but seems to have 
been a consistent royalist. 

Hobbes had two other remarkable friends. One was 
Harvey (1578-1657), whose great discovery of the 
circulation of the blood had been first published in 
1616, and of whom Hobbes always speaks with pro- 
found admiration. Harvey is said to have left him 
£10 in his will. 1 The other was John Selden (1584- 

1 Aubrey reports that Selden, like Harvey, left £10 to his 
friend, but this seems to be an error. 



i.] LIFE 49 

1654). Their acquaintance began by Hobbes sending 
him a copy of the Leviathan, after which, says Aubrey, 
there was a strict friendship between them. The con- 
versations between the authors of the Leviathan and 
the Table Talk would no doubt be worth hearing, and 
Selden' s Erastian views would be thoroughly acceptable 
to Hobbes. Baxter, however, reports, on the authority 
of Sir Matthew Hale, that Selden attacked Hobbes's 
sceptical opinions so forcibly as to drive him out of the 
room. Another of Aubrey's stories is that Hobbes 
dissuaded Selden from sending for a clergyman when 
he was dying. " What," he is supposed to have said, 
" will you that have wrote like a man now die like a 
woman ? " As a contradictory account is given of 
Selden's death, and as Hobbes certainly acted on the 
opposite principle when he was himself in danger, we 
may probably assume that the anecdote represents not 
what actually happened, but what somebody thought 
would naturally be done by an " atheist." 

Meanwhile Hobbes was, as he says, in a country 
where every one might write what he pleased. Free 
from fear of priests and with some gratitude to 
sectaries, he could sit down to finish his philosophy. 
He had sufficiently expounded his political theories, 
and they were provoking some controversy. Filmer 
(best known from Locke's attack upon his posthumous 
book, the Patriarcha) criticised Hobbes in 1652, along 
with Grotius and Milton. Alexander Eoss, whose 
memory is preserved only by a rhyme in Hudibras as 
to the "philosopher who had read Alexander Eoss 
over," animadverted on the Leviathan next year. But 
they were opponents who might be neglected by a 
writer who had now achieved so high a position. 

E 



\ 
/ 






50 HOBBES [chap. 

Hobbes sat down to finish his work by completing 
the exposition of first principles, from which he had 
been distracted by his interest in the parliamentary 
struggle. 

He was presently interrupted. The anonymous 
person to whom he had entrusted a copy of his dis- 
cussion with Bramhall was now induced to publish 
the piece in which, as he said in a preface, the author 
of the Leviathan had solved a question over which 
divines had wrangled so long and so fruitlessly. 
Bramhall naturally supposed that Hobbes, who had 
stipulated at the time for privacy, was responsible for 
the publication. He therefore published all that had 
passed, with his rejoinder to Hobbes. Hobbes replied 
in 1658, and Bramhall two years afterward came out with 
Castigation of Mr. Hobbes' s Animadversions, together 
with an appendix called The Catching of Leviathan the 
Great Whale. This was meant to expose the atheistical 
doctrine embodied in Hobbes's chief work. Bramhall 
died in 1663, and Hobbes, who declares that he had not 
heard of the attack for ten years, now made a reply 
which did not appear till after his own death. The 
controversy brought out some of Hobbes's most vigorous 
writing, and gives an important part of his philosophy, 
of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Hobbes 
meanwhile had finished the book which was to give the 
foundations of his system. It was published in Latin 
as Be Corpore in 1655. An English translation (only 
superintended by himself) appeared in 1656. 

This book contains a very important exposition of 
Hobbes's general principles. It also includes certain 
very unfortunate speculations which led to one of the 
most singular tangles of controversy in which a philo- 



i.] LIFE 51 

sopher ever wasted his energies. I have already noted 
Hobbes's condemnation of the universities, which had 
found sufficient expression in the Leviathan. Accord- 
ing to him, they still taught nothing but the old 
scholasticism, corrupted youth by classical republi- 
canism, and were ignorant of modern science. He was 
not aware, it seems, of the remarkable change which 
had come over his own university. In 1610*; £kir 
Henry Savile had founded professorships 01 geometry 
and astronomy. Until that time, according to Hobbes, 
many people regarded geometry as "art diabolical/' 
and its professors, as Wood says, were taken to be 
" limbs of the devil." Mathematical studies were now 
gaining respect, and by the time of Hobbes's return to 
England, Oxford had become the meeting-place of a 
remarkable number of eminent and energetic teachers. 
Never before — perhaps one might add, not often after- 
wards — was the university so important a focus of 
scientific illumination. Oxford (alternately with Lon- 
don) was the headquarters of the remarkable group of 
men who founded the Eoyal Society after the Restora- 
tion. Young men destined to become famous, Eobert 
Boyle and Christopher Wren and Hobbes's friend, 
Petty, and others less generally known, were of the 
number. Boyle, the eldest of the three, was thirty-nine 
years and Wren forty-four years younger than Hobbes. 
They represented the new generation, eager to enter 
into that promised land of science of which Bacon had 
caught " a Pisgah sight." The two Savilian professors, 
both some years older, were men of mark. Seth Ward 
(1617-1689) had been appointed professor of astro- 
nomy in 1649, though previously ejected from Cam- 
bridge for refusing the covenant. He was already 



52 HOBBES [chap. 

known as an able mathematician, though after the 
Eestoration he left science to rise in the Church and 
become ultimately Bishop of Salisbury. John Wallis 
(1618-1703), the professor of geometry from 1649, 
was a man of singular acuteness, and one of the first 
mathematicians of his day. His Arithmetica Injinitorum, 
published in 1655, was the greatest step towards the 
d^ Q lppment of the differential calculus, elaborated by 
Newton aiM Leibnitz in the next generation. Oxford 
while represented by such men could certainly not be 
condemned as behind the time in science. Hobbes, 
who specially claimed to represent the scientific move- 
ment, should have recognised the men who were its 
most efficient organs. Unluckily for him things fell 
out very differently. Ward replied to Hobbes in an 
appendix to a book mainly directed against another 
assailant of the universities. 1 In an earlier essay he 
had professed a high opinion of that " worthy gentle- 
man," Hobbes ; but he now felt bound to expose the 
worthy gentleman's arrogance and ignorance. Backed 
by a letter from the famous John Wilkins, at this time 
warden of Wadham, and afterwards the first secretary 
of the Eoyal Society, he accused Hobbes of plagiarism, 
and taunted him in advance. Whenever Hobbes pub- 
lished his geometrical discoveries (of which he had 
apparently been boasting) he would find that they 
were only too well understood at Oxford. 

These discoveries saw the light in the De Corpore. 
Hobbes had squared the circle : and though the sub- 

1 John Webster, known also from his Displaying of Supposed 
Witchcraft (1677), directed against Henry More and other 
credulous persons : and not the famous dramatist, as others 
have had to prove. 



ti 



i.] LIFE 53 

ject was strictly irrelevant, he could not refrain from 
introducing a chapter into his book by way of showing 
his capacity. He had solved the problem which had 
baffled all previous geometers from Archimedes down- 
ward. No man ever made a more unlucky boast. 
Ward and Wallis agreed to make an example of the 
rash intruder who had given himself into their hands. 
Ward wrote against the general philosophy ; in that 
department nothing could be done beyond repeating 
familiar arguments. Wallis, who undertook the 
mathematics, had a more satisfactory task. Mathe- 
matical controversies have the peculiarity that they 
lead to definite issues, in which one side must be 
entirely in the right, and the other entirely in the 
wrong. Hobbes had or had not squared the circle, and 
his success or failure could be clearly demonstrated to 
all competent people. As a matter of fact, of course, he 
had failed egregiously. Not only so, but he had made 
successive attempts; falling out of one blunder into 
another, he had left traces of the process by cancelling 
sheets, and he had shown a strange incapacity for even 
appreciating the conditions of strict mathematical 
proof. All this Wallis explained in an Elenchus 
Geometrice Hobbianaz, adding reproof and ridicule to 
poison the wound to his victim's vanity. Hobbes was 
too incompetent even to know that he had been refuted. 
With a courage worthy of a better cause he defended 
his own errors, and gave fresh proofs of incapacity by 
attacking Wallis's real discoveries in Six Lessons for the 
Oxford professors. Wallis in return gave Due Correc- 
tion for Mr. Hobbes in School Discipline for not saying Ms 
Lessons right. The language became worse, and diverged 
into irrelevant topics. Wallis charged Hobbes with 






54 HOBBES [chap. 

confusing the Greek words Sny/*,?/ and Srty/xa. 
Hobbes's next book was therefore headed " Sny/xai 
Ay e<x)fji€T peas, Aypoi/a'as, 'AvrnroXiruas, 'AjxaOetas or 
Marks of the absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish 
Church Politics, and Barbarisms of John Wallis" 

When the Royal Society was founded, 1662, Hobbes 
was naturally not invited to join a body of which his 
antagonists were leading members. He showed his 
anger by attacking Boyle's account of his experiment 
with the air-pump. He often said that if people who 
tried such a farrago of experiments were to be called 
philosophers, the title might be bestowed upon apothe- 
caries and gardeners and the like. Besides stating that 
the Society was on the wrong tack and would learn 
nothing till they adopted his principles, he indulged 
in a personal fling at Wallis. Wallis replied in the 
Hobbius Heauton Timoroumenos, which seems to have 
been the most complete exposure of Hobbes' s manifold 
blunders. It gave Hobbes, however, his one telling 
retort. Wallis made the accusation of disloyalty already 
noticed. Hobbes defended himself, and pointed out 
that Wallis had deciphered the king's despatches taken 
after Naseby, and had boasted of the fact. If Wallis 
now said (as he seems to have done) that he did it to 
the king's advantage, that would only show that he 
cheated his employer, excused treason with treachery, 
and was a double spy. To this awkward thrust Wallis 
did not reply. But it did not prove that Hobbes had 
squared the circle. 

The battle was not yet ended. Four years later 
(1666) Hobbes came out with a new treatise, in which 
he admitted that all geometers were against him; 
either he alone must be mad or he alone not mad; 



i.] LIFE 55 

unless indeed they were all mad together. He was now 
seventy-eight, but still wrote treatises to which Wallis 
punctually replied until 1672, when Hobbes was 
eighty-four. Wallis then dropped off, but Hobbes 
published yet another treatise in 1674, and fired a 
final shot called the Decameron Physiologicum in 1678, 
at the ripe age of ninety. 1 

There is something pathetic as well as comical in 
this singular history. Hobbes told Sorbiere in 1656 
that he attacked the professors mainly because they 
represented the clergy and universities. That was a 
very bad reason for assaulting his opponent's strongest 
side. The old gentleman certainly wasted a great 
deal of time and temper, and showed an amazing 
degree of self-confidence. Still he was near seventy 
when the fight began, and to a man of that age some- 
thing should be forgiven for intellectual energy, even 
in a mistaken cause. One remark may, I suppose, be 
made. A man who attempted circle-squaring at a 
later period proved himself to be hopelessly at sea. 
Many such adventurers are described in de Morgan's 
very amusing Budget of Paradoxes. But in Hobbes's 
day the enterprise was not so clearly perceived to 
be hopeless. He was called in, as we have seen, to 



*A full account of this controversy is given in Croom 
Robertson's Hobbes, pp. 167-185. I have been content to 
follow him, and have not even seen Wallis's pamphlets, which 
have become rare, as he declined to print them in his works 
after Hobbes's death. Robertson was far more competent than 
I could be to give an opinion upon the merits of a controversy, 
which in any case would not deserve any lengthy discussion in 
the present book. Dr. Tonnies thinks Robertson rather hard 
upon Hobbes, and unjust to the historical significance of this 
controversy. 



56 HOBBES [chap. 

arbitrate in one case of circle-squaring, and his friend 
Mersenne had a controversy about the same time with 
the Jesuit, St. Vincent, " the best of circle-squarers." 
To square the circle, or in other words to find the 
ratio of the radius to the circumference, was of course 
a rational problem, though, I suppose, that the proper 
treatment could not be applied till the development of 
the methods adopted by Wallis, and so unfortunately 
misunderstood by Hobbes. He persistently protested 
against the application of algebra to geometry: that 
is against the most essential step in advance that was 
being made in his day. He consequently made an 
attempt in which failure was inevitable. De Morgan, 
however, seems to feel a certain compunction in 
classing him with the circle-squarers, and says, that 
in spite of his blunders he shows great ability in his 
remarks upon the general theory of mathematical 
reasoning. 

The moral is, I suppose, that a man ought to read 
Euclid before he is forty. He will assimilate the 
principles better, and he will also be made aware of 
the danger of mistaking blunders for original dis- 
coveries. That is an error of which he will be cured 
by examiners. Anyhow, besides wasting his energy, 
Hobbes had put himself in a curiously uncomfortable 
position by the time of the Eestoration. Intellectual 
audacity combines awkwardly with personal timidity. 
The poor old gentleman, aged seventy-two, whose 
great aim was to keep out of harm's way, had stirred 
up an amazing mass of antipathies. His political 
absolutism was hateful to constitutionalists like 
Clarendon as well as to the more popular politicians : 
to the two parties, that is, which were about to become 



i 



i.] LIFE 57 

tories and whigs. Anglican bishops and non-con- 
formist divines agreed that he was an atheist, and 
what was to some almost as bad, a hater of all ecclesi- 
astical authority. His political views might suit the 
courtiers, but no one could be more hostile to their 
leanings to Rome. Political absolutism and religious 
scepticism made a creed which could not be openly 
avowed, though it might and did excite some tacit 
sympathy. He had, however, spoken with a certain 
authority as a representative of science. Now the 
scientific and philosophical world had ostracised him. 
They had pronounced him to be a charlatan. A man 
who could make such a mess of squaring the circle was 
presumably a paradox-monger in philosophy. His 
opponents would taunt him with a failure admitted by 
every one but himself . It is true that popular opinion 
looks upon philosophers with a dash of amused con- 
tempt. Like Shakespeare's fools they are allowed a 
certain license. Their queer opinions, even if atro- 
cious, are so far removed from practical business as to 
be harmless and rather amusing playthings. Person- 
ally Hobbes was generally agreeable ; and so venerable 
in appearance that one would prefer to leave him in 
quiet. He had some anxious moments, but on the 
whole was tolerated. 

Hobbes had spent the winter of 1659 in Derby- 
shire, when Aubrey wrote to beg him to be present 
at the king's arrival in London. Hobbes was 
standing at the gates of Little Salisbury House 
as his majesty's coach drove through the Strand. 
Charles recognised his old tutor, took off his 
hat and greeted him kindly. A week afterwards 
Hobbes attended when Charles was sitting for his 



58 HOBBES [chap 

portrait to the famous miniature painter, Samuel 
Cooper, and diverted the sitter by his "pleasant dis- 
course." Charles gave orders that he should always 
have access to the court — the royal taste was good in 
the matter of " wit and sharp repartees." When 
Hobbes appeared, the king would say : " Here comes 
the bear to be baited ; " and the courtiers did their 
best. Hobbes feared none of them, being " marvellous 
happy and ready in his replies." He took care, how- 
ever, to avoid serious topics. During the following 
period, Hobbes spent most of his time in London. 
Our next glimpse of him is given by the French 
ambassador, the Comte de Cominges. Louis XIV. had 
at this time resolved to become the patron of learned 
men throughout Europe. Cominges was directed to 
inquire what men worthy of this exalted patronage 
were to be found in England. He made the dis- 
couraging reply that arts and sciences had chosen 
Erance as their sole abode. In England men still 
remembered Bacon, Sir Thomas More, and Buchanan, 
but the only living author of reputation was "un 
nomme Miltonius" : an infamous person whose writings 
would not be to the taste of the great king. Shortly 
afterwards he discovered Hobbes, and invited him to 
dinner along with the famous mathematician, Christian 
Huygens, and Hobbes's old friend Sorbiere. The 
" bonhomme " Hobbes speaks enthusiastically of Louis, 
and he might truly be called " assertor regum " (a title 
which " Miltonius" clearly did not deserve) and 
Cominges would be very glad to be the means of 
obtaining a pension for him. Never, he says, " will 
any favour have been better placed." The application 
was favourably received at first, but nothing seems to 



i.] LIFE 59 

have come of it. Perhaps on inquiry somebody 
remembered that Hobbes had left France in bad odour 
with the priests, to say the least ; or Huygens, upon 
whom a pension was bestowed, may have given a 
confidential opinion about the squaring of the circle. 
Hobbes's friends anyhow denied at his death some 
report of a designed or actual pension. Charles, how- 
ever, had given him a pension of £100 a year. An 
undated petition shows that it had been stopped for 
some time along with others ; but Hobbes says he 
had enjoyed it to his great comfort for many years. 
He mentions arrears in his will (1677). Sorbiere next 
year wrote an account of his travels with due compli- 
ment to Hobbes. The third earl, he says, " loves and 
reveres n his old tutor. He applies Charles's saying 
about baiting the bear to the clergy ; and adds : " I 
know not how it comes to pass, the clergy are afraid 
of him." 

Hobbes was certainly afraid of the clergy. The 
years 1665 and 1666 were marked by the plague and 
the fire of London, which naturally startled contempo- 
raries. The fire of London might perhaps be set down 
to the Papists, as was recorded on the monument, but 
they could hardly have been responsible for the plague. 
That was doubtless a manifestation of Divine wrath ; 
and to the question, what had provoked it? the 
obvious answer was, Hobbes. A bill was brought into 
parliament for the suppression of atheism and pro- 
faneness, and a committee was instructed to receive 
information about "Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan." With 
him was joined an eccentric Catholic priest, Thomas 
White (or Albius), known at the time as a contro- 
versialist. White was suspected of heresy. He had, 



60 HOBBES [chap. 

it seems, denied the " natural " immortality of the 
soul. Hobbes and White were doubtless not the only- 
offenders. The court was not perfectly pure. The 
bill passed the House of Commons but was ultimately 
dropped. Hobbes was frightened, and not without 
reason. Aubrey mentions a report (probably referring 
to this time) that some of the bishops made a motion 
" to have the good old gentleman burnt for a heretic." 
Hereupon, he says, Hobbes put some of his papers in 
the fire. Hobbes wrote an essay concerning heresy to 
prove that he could not be legally burnt, and protested 
in an appendix to a Latin translation of the Leviathan. 
The essay was not published, and Hobbes probably 
depended for safety less upon his logic than upon 
the favour of Charles and of Arlington. Arlington, 
the secretary of state, was a concealed Catholic. 
There were plenty of " Hobbists " at the court at this 
time, as Clarendon and Burnet sorrowfully confess. 
Arlington possibly preferred them to the Anglican 
bishops who were more dangerous enemies of his 
church. Hobbes, at any rate, addresses Arlington as 
the special protector of his old age. The first result 
was that Hobbes was not attacked but forbidden to 
give further utterance to his views. Charles forbade 
the publication of the Behemoth, written in 1668; and 
Pepys wishing to buy the Leviathan, " which is now 
mightily called for " (3rd September, 1668), found that 
he had to pay twenty-four shillings for a second-hand 
copy; whereas it had theretofore been sold for eight 
shillings. It is now, he adds, sold for thirty shillings. 
The bishops would not allow it to be reprinted. 

A year latter, one Scargill, a fellow of Corpus 
College, Cambridge, having maintained some theses in 



i.] LIFE 61 

which phrases from the Leviathan were twisted to an 
offensive meaning, was expelled from the university, 
and induced to make a public recantation. He had 
gloried in being a Hobbist and atheist, and attributed 
his moral ruin to Hobbes's principles. After this 
alarm, says Kennett, Hobbes went more regularly to 
the earl's chapel, though he would not go to the 
parish church. He did not care for sermons. They 
could teach him nothing but what he knew. His fame 
meanwhile was spreading abroad. In 1669 he was 
visited several times by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 
who took away a portrait and works of the philoso- 
pher, to be preserved among the most precious jewels 
of the Medicean library. 

In 1668 Hobbes reached his eightieth year, and 
might have had other motives for silence than pro- 
hibitions by authority. He preserved his intellectual 
activity, however, almost to the last. Besides the 
books mentioned, he had, about 1659, according to 
Aubrey, and about his eightieth year according to his 
own account, written a Latin poem of more than two 
thousand elegiacs, versifying the Historia Universalis 
of Cluverius, and describing once more the usurpations 
of the spiritual power. In 1664 Aubrey begged him to 
write about law, when he answered that he could not 
count upon life enough. Few men could become law 
students at seventy-six. Aubrey, however, sent him 
Bacon's Elements of the Common Laws; whereupon he 
set to work, and produced a Dialogue bettveen a Philo- 
sopher and a Student of the Common Laivs of England. 
His especial aim was to confute Coke, as the wor- 
shipper of precedent. The dialogue was not finished ; 
but it is noticed by Maine as showing that Hobbes 



62 HOBBES [chap. 

had anticipated many of the legal reforms afterwards 
advocated by Bentham. A few years later he retired 
from controversy — not to silence, but to a new literary 
employment. In 1673 he published the Voyage of 
Ulysses : a translation into English quatrains of Books 
IX.-XII. of the Odyssey. This, it seems, was by way of 
experiment ; and a year later he produced a complete 
translation both of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nobody 
has yet, I believe, discovered that the work is a worthy 
rival of Chapman or Pope : a task which might per- 
haps have charms for some literary revivalists. The 
severest critic might be touched to silence at any rate 
by Hobbes's own apology : " Why did I write it ? Be- 
cause I had nothing else to do. Why publish it? 
Because I thought it might take off my adversaries 
from showing their folly upon my more serious writ- 
ings, and set them upon my verses to show their 
wisdom. But why without annotation? Because I 
had no hope to do it better than it is already done 
by Mr. Ogilby." It was at least a creditable occupa- 
tion for a man of eighty-six. I will content myself 
with quoting the passage which has often been quoted 
to prove that Hobbes could deviate into a really 
poetical phrase. It is from the famous meeting of 
Hector and Andromache: 

" Now Hector met her with their little boy 
That in the nurse's arms was carried, 
And like a star upon her bosom lay 
His beautiful and shining golden head." 

In 1675 Hobbes left London finally, to pass the last 
four years of his life at Chatsworth and Hardwick. 
He was still at work ; his last scientific paper appeared 



i.] LIFE 63 

when he was ninety, and on the 18th of August 1679 
he tells his publisher that he is writing somewhat to 
print in English. In October he was attacked by a 
complaint incurable at his age. " I shall be glad," he 
said upon learning it, " to find a hole to creep out of 
the world at." At the end of November the family 
moved from Chatsworth to Hardwick, and Hobbes 
declining to be left behind, was put upon a feather-bed 
in the coach. The journey was too much for his 
strength ; an attack of paralysis soon followed, and he 
died on December 4th. He was buried at the parish 
church of Hault Hucknall. The family and neigh- 
bours who attended were "very handsomely enter- 
tained with wine, burnt and raw, cakes, biscuits, etc.," 
and a slab of black marble was placed upon his 
grave. In the inscription he is called " Vir probus et 
fama eruditionis clomi forisque bene cognitus." He had 
amused himself, it is said, by allowing his friends to 
prepare epitaphs, and the design which pleased him 
most was a gravestone inscribed : " This is the true 
Philosopher's Stone." 

Hobbes left nearly £1000, " which," says Aubrey, 
" considering his charity, was more than I expected." 
He had given a piece of land to a nephew, and paid 
off a mortgage of £200 with which the nephew had 
encumbered his estate. Aubrey collects a few bits of 
information, with provoking gaps, as to his appearance 
and manners. This is a tantalising statement for 
phrenologists : " His head was . . . inches in com- 
pass (I have the measure) and of a mallet form 
(approved by the physiologers)." He was unhealthy 
in youth, but grew strong when about forty, and had 
a fresh ruddy complexion. He had an ample forehead, 



i 



64 HOBBES [chap. 

and " yellowish-reddish whiskers, which naturally 
turned up, a sign of a brisk wit." He shaved close, 
except a little tip under his lip — " though nature would 
have afforded a venerable beard," he abandoned that 
ornament to avoid affectation of philosophic dignity. 
"He had a good eye, hazel coloured, which would 
shine when he became eager, as though there were a 
bright live-coal within it." Various portraits, one at 
the National Portrait Gallery, and two in the rooms of 
the Eoyal Society, 1 show a head which is marked both 
by acuteness and singular dignity of expression. 
Hobbes might have sat for a portrait of Plato, and is, 
I think, the best looking philosopher known to me. 

The following account of his habits refers pre- 
sumably to his last years. He rose about seven, and 
breakfasted on bread and butter, then he walked and 
meditated till ten, he dined at eleven, as his stomach 
could not bear waiting till the earl's dinner at two. 
After dinner he took a pipe of tobacco and a nap, and 
in the afternoon wrote down his morning's thoughts. 
He had been much addicted to music in his youth, and 
practised on the bass viol. He had always books of 
" prick-song " lying on his table, such as Lawes's songs, 
and at night when he was in bed, and the doors made 
fast, so that he was sure of being unheard, he would sing 
aloud for his health's sake. He denied the common 
report, that he was afraid to be alone on account of 
ghosts. He was not afraid of spirits, but of being 
knocked on the head for five or ten pounds. Hobbes 
was evidently careful about his health, and a believer 
in bodily exercise. He played tennis " twice or thrice 

1 A photograph from one of the last is prefixed to Robertson's 
monograph. 



i.] LIFE 65 

a year" according to Aubrey — once a week says 
Sorbiere — when he was well over seventy. He illus- 
trates more than one argument in the Leviathan by 
reference to the game. In the country, where there 
was no tennis-court, he walked up and down hill 
till he was in a great sweat and then had himself 
rubbed down. " ; Tis not consistent with an harinon- 
ical soul," as Aubrey observes, " to be a woman- 
hater, neither had he an abhorrescence to good wine." 
Kennett speaks of a natural daughter, whom he called 
his delictum juventutis, and for whom he provided. But 
if he had been habitually immoral, his respectable 
opponents would hardly have refrained, as they in fact 
did, from any accusation of the kind. He calcu- 
lated that he had been drunk one hundred times in the 
course of his life : which, says Aubrey, " considering 
his great age, did not amount to once a year." The 
arithmetic is erroneous ; but twice a year would hardly 
bring him up to the average of his time. He could 
never endure habitual excess, as Aubrey testifies, and 
after sixty he drank no wine. He had some more 
attacks of illness (a dangerous one in 1668) besides 
those mentioned before, and his hand began to shake 
about 1650. About 1665 his writing became illegible. 
Hobbes had few books in his chamber; but 
" Homer and Virgil were commonly on his table; 
sometimes Xenophon or some probable history, and 
Greek Testament or so " — which seems to be a pretty 
good selection. " He was wont to say, that if he had 
read as much as other men, he should have known no 
more than other men." He appreciated, that is, the 
truth that it is more important to assimilate than to 
accumulate materials of thought. Descartes, like 



66 HOBBES [chap. 

Hobbes, insisted upon, and exaggerated his ignorance 
of previous authors. He had read nothing, as Voltaire 
put it, pas meme VEvangile. The attitude was natural 
in men who were deliberately rejecting the established 
doctrines of their time, and trying to substitute a new 
scheme of thought built upon entirely new foundations. 
The man, as Robertson remarks, who began his career 
by translating Thucydides, and ended it by translat- 
ing Homer, cannot be taken as a simple contemner of 
literature. 

Aubrey was properly anxious to collect some of his 
hero's good sayings. If he did not succeed in making 
a long list, his fate was that which befalls most such 
enterprises. He should, like Boswell or like Hobbes 
himself, have carried a note-book in his pocket. One 
characteristic saying may be quoted. "He was," says 
Aubrey, "very charitable to those that were true 
objects of his bounty. He gave sixpence one day to 
a poor beggar in the Strand. Whereupon a divine 
asked him : ' Would you have done this if it had not 
been Christ's command?' 'Yea/ said he. 'Why?' 
quoth the other. i Because,' said he, ' I was in pain to 
consider the miserable condition of the old man, and 
now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease 
me.' " This shows perhaps that his practice was better 
than his ethical theory. 1 

1 Hobbes received £50 a year from his patron besides 
occasional presents, such as £40 for the dedication of the Be 
Corpore. He speaks (in the life) of his indifference to gain. 
No avaricious man, he declares, ever achieved a noble work. 
He had lived to study, and he condemns those who study for the 
sake of gain. His boast seems to be fully justified. His life 
was worthy of a philosopher, in spite of trifling foibles, due 
to temper or timidity. It is to the credit of the British 



I 



i.] LIFE 67 

Before considering his theories, however, something 
may be said of the view taken of him by his contem- 
poraries. I do not speak at present of the more 
serious antagonists who wrote upon his philosophy. 
It is enough to say here that they attacked him with 
remarkable unanimity. His predecessor, Bacon, was 
cited on all sides as a venerable authority. His 
successor, Locke, was adopted as a leader by the great 
majority of the younger thinkers. Hobbes impressed 
English thought almost entirely by rousing opposition. 
Possibly his opponents had more or less to modify their 
own position in order to meet his arguments ; but to 
them at least it seemed that Hobbism was the upas 
tree to be cut down root and branch. The Auctarium 
gives a long list of contemporary writers upon Hobbes ; 
but can only mention a solitary work done in his 
defence, and that anonymous. He was the typical 
atheist. "Atheism," no doubt was a name bestowed 
upon a phase of sentiment common enough at the 
court of Charles II., as it had been, according to 
Mersenne, in Paris. The religious controversies of 
the Reformation period had naturally led to a " scepti- 
cal spirit," such as found utterance in Montaigne's 
immortal essays. The endless war of dogmas revealed 
the folly of dogmatism. Montaigne, though disclaim- 
ing philosophical pretensions, suggested philosophical 
problems to great thinkers like Pascal; but he was 
acceptable to less serious minds. The so-called 



aristocracy of those days — who do not generally get many 
compliments — that one of them gave to the hated sceptic a 
support which made him virtually independent enough to de- 
vote his powers to philosophy, while he deserved it by honourable 
service. 



68 HOBBES [chap. 

" libertins," it seems, would alternately attack and 
humble themselves before the priests, as they objected 
to any moral police, or thought that, after all, absolu- 
tion might be convenient. They could profess scepti- 
cism under cover of more serious thinkers, and then 
make edifying ends to clear their scores. Probably 
that was true of many Hobbists. Eachard, best known 
by his book on the causes of the contempt of the clergy, 
wrote in 1672 two very smart dialogues in ridicule of 
Hobbes. He divides the followers of Hobbes into pit, 
box, and gallery. The pit was filled by the sturdy 
sinners who welcomed him as an ally against morality 
in general ; the gallery by fine gentlemen anxious to 
show their wit ; and the boxes by men of gravity and 
reputation whose approval was more cautious. The 
" Hobbist " was generally taken to be the shallow 
infidel, who still figures in edifying tracts. The 
character of the " town-gallant " (1680) says that "he 
swears that the Leviathan may supply all the lost 
leaves of Solomon, though, for anything that he has 
read himself, it may be a treatise on catching sprats." 
He has only learnt through the rattle of coffee-houses ; 
but the book maintains that there are no angels except 
those in petticoats ! A tract of 1686 describes the 
" town-fop " as equipped with three or four wild com- 
panions, "half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, and two 
leaves of Leviathan" In Farquhar's Coristant Couple 
(1700), the hypocrite pulls out of his pocket a book 
supposed by his friends to be full of "pious ejacula- 
tions," while he remarks to himself : " This Hobbes is 
an excellent fellow." The only concrete instance of 
such a Hobbist mentioned is Charles Blount (1654- 
1693), the unfortunate deist, who killed himself because 




i.] LIFE 69 

he was not allowed to marry his deceased wife's sister. 
He published various tracts, including a sheet of say- 
ings from Hobbes's works, and a tract borrowed from 
Milton's Areopagitica, and deserved to be regarded as 
something more than a "town-fop." According to 
Aubrey, Dryden greatly admired Hobbes, and in his 
plays made use of some of Hobbes's doctrines. I am 
not aware of any coincidence in confirmation of this. 
Dryden says himself that he was sceptical by nature, 
and before his conversion he may have sympathised 
with Hobbes's hatred of priestcraft; but his poems 
on religion do not seem to imply any familiarity with 
the Leviathan. Hobbes ceases about the end of the 
century to be the butt of all orthodox controversialists. 
In the following generation, Toland and Collins, who 
professed to be applying Locke's philosophy in the 
interests of free-thinking, became the regular objects 
for attacks, and Hobbes passes out of notice. War- 
burton, who loved acute paradox, notices the change, 
and speaks of Hobbes with a certain admiration ; but 
he shared the fate of all his contemporaries, as the 
eighteenth century came to think the seventeenth 
hopelessly old-fashioned. 



CHAPTER II 



1. Hobbes's starting-point and aims 

I remarked, superfluously perhaps, that the circum- 
stances revealed by Hobbes's biography had an impor- 
tant bearing upon an appreciation of his philosophy. 
The two incidents to which he gives a place in his own 
life, the sudden revelation of the charms of Euclid 
when he was forty, and the conversation upon the 
nature of sense-perception, mark the impression made 
upon him by movements in the contemporary world 
of scientific and philosophic thought. On the other 
side, his position in the family of a great noble en- 
couraged a keen interest in the controversies which 
distracted the political world. His own intellectual 
and moral idiosyncrasies of course determined his spe- 
cial attitude towards the great issues involved in both 
cases. Hobbes's idiosyncrasies are sufficiently obvious. 
He was, in the first place, a born logician. He loved 
reasoning for its own sake. His great aim was to be 
absolutely clear, orderly, and systematic. He desired, 

1 The Be Corpore, which is the chief authority for the follow- 
ing chapter, is in the first volume of the Latin works in Moles- 
worth's edition. An English translation, superintended, but not 
written, by Hobbes and containing some curious mistakes, forms 
the first volume of the English works. 

70 



i 



chap, ii.] THE WORLD 71 

in modern phrase, to effect the thorough unification of 
knowledge. Euclid fascinated him as constituting a 
complete chain of demonstrable propositions, each 
indissolubly linked to its predecessor, and every one 
confirming and confirmed by the others. A complete 
theory of things in general should, he thought, be a 
philosophical Euclid ; and he hoped to lay down its 
fundamental principles and its main outlines. He 
shrank from no convictions to which his logic appeared 
to lead him ; and he expounded them with a sublime 
self-confidence, tempered, indeed, by his decided un- 
willingness to become a martyr. Of course, like most 
men in whom the logical faculty is predominant, he 
was splendidly one-sided. When things seemed clear 
to him, he could not even understand that any diffi- 
culties existed for any one. That difficulties did in 
fact exist is plain enough to his readers, if only from 
the curious devices by which he is sometimes driven 
to meet them. But though to others he may appear 
to be evading the point, or adopting inconsistent 
solutions, to himself he always seems to be following 
the straightforward path of inexorable logic. 

One-sidedness is a most valuable quality. It means 
willingness to try intellectual experiments thoroughly. 
A man who sees the objections to an hypothesis, is 
tempted not to give it a fair trial ; the man who sees 
no objections, is tempted to force all doctrine into his 
own preconceived framework ; but, on the other hand, 
he is more likely to bring into relief whatever truth 
it may really contain. He may at times show that 
what seemed to be merely paradox is an important 
element of the whole truth. More frequently, no 
doubt, he may enable others to perceive the precise 



72 HOBBES [chap. 

points at which, his system breaks down. One-sided- 
ness, it need hardly be said, implies defects. Hobbes, 
for example, was not a poet ; he had no sympathy for 
the imaginative and emotional thinkers; he would 
have been the last man to lose himself, like his con- 
temporary, Sir Thomas Browne, in an Altitudo, or to 
soar into the regions in which the mystic is at home. 
For him those regions were simply the habitat of 
absurd chimeras, to be exorcised by downright hard- 
hitting dialectics. He loved to be in broad daylight, 
to base himself on the tangible facts which undoubtedly 
must be recognised in a satisfactory system. Mystery 
for him means nonsense, and is to be excluded from 
all speculation whether upon geometry or religion. 
Invaluable services are rendered by the active appli- 
cation of such an intellect; but clearly its possessor 
is likely to say a good many things which will shock 
people of a different turn, and his want of sympathy 
with their sentiments may lead him to dismiss con- 
temptuously and abruptly opinions which may conceal 
important truth under vague imagery. 

I must endeavour to set forth Hobbes's main positions 
impartially, without attempting to go far into problems 
which since his day have been discussed by generations 
of philosophers, and which, I fancy, are not as yet 
quite settled. 

One point may be noticed at starting. Hobbes 
gave his views of both " natural " and " civil " philo- 
sophy, to use his own terms. He has been criticised 
both as a natural and as a civil philosopher, and 
the one or the other part of his work has been made 
most prominent according to the special purpose 
or personal taste of the critic. This suggests the 



ii.] THE WORLD 73 

inquiry, whether his interest in physical science or in 
the nature of men and institutions gave the real start- 
ing-point of his speculation. A decisive answer can 
scarcely be given, and an answer is of the less impor- 
tance because his most characteristic point is precisely 
his conviction that the two inquiries are inseparably 
connected. Hobbes appears to have been the first 
writer who clearly announced that " civil philoso- 
phy " must be based upon "natural philosophy/' or, 
in other words, that a sound "sociology" must be 
based upon scientific knowledge. He may be called 
a Herbert Spencer of the seventeenth century, and 
in spite of very wide differences, there is a certain 
resemblance between the two thinkers. Each of them 
aims at exhibiting a complete system in which the 
results of the physical sciences will be co-ordinated with 
ethical and political theory. Hobbes's attempt was of 
necessity premature; the essential data were not in 
existence. Physical science was still in its infancy; 
and Hobbes's own scientific knowledge was necessarily 
as crude as that of his contemporaries, and had special 
defects of its own. The political philosophy, again, 
however acute, was stated in terms of speculations 
which have long become obsolete. The Leviathan, 
once so terrible, may be taken for an intellectual fossil 
— a collection of erroneous assumptions and sophistries 
which are confuted in a paragraph or two of the 
students' text-books. Perhaps our descendants may 
be equally dissatisfied with systems which bulk very 
largely in our eyes, though we may hope that they 
will make allowance for our inevitable ignorance. 

If, however, thinkers did not break ground by fram- 
ing " premature " schemes of doctrine, they would 



74 HOBBES [chap. 

never advance to riper and more durable schemes. 
Great thinkers at least do something to test the solidity 
of the old structures, and here and there lay a founda- 
tion-stone or two, which will be built into the more 
comprehensive edifices of the future. We are not 
ourselves so far advanced in the social sciences that 
we can afford to judge our predecessors with the con- 
fidence of men who have reached a definitive system. 
The tentative gropings of a great man, trying to secure 
a starting-point, are always instructive, and Hobbes 
may at least show us what were some of the besetting 
fallacies at an early stage of speculation. He certainly 
has such merits in a high degree, though, as I think, 
more decidedly in "civil" than in "natural " philosophy. 

Hobbes succeeded in working out a legal or political 
theory, which had a very genuine and powerful effect 
upon the course of speculation. Few people accepted 
the political doctrine generally attributed to him, and 
most people repudiated it with indignation. Still it 
influenced men, if only by repulsion, while much of 
his argument has been adopted by others, and occasion- 
ally reappears in curiously different combinations. I 
consider this to be the most important aspect of 
" Hobbism." It may be said, too, that whatever w^as 
his real starting-point — whether he began with political 
opinions and then tried to bring them into connection 
with his scientific views, or followed the reverse pro- 
cess — it was certainly the political doctrine which he 
expounded most thoroughly and consistently. His 
teaching, whatever its faults, has evidently been traced 
out carefully and patiently, and is a complete elabora- 
tion of certain leading principles. 

It is, however, essential to consider his views of 



ii.] THE WORLD 75 

"natural philosophy." He contributed nothing to 
the special sciences. His expositions of first principles 
show inconsistencies which suggest that he had not 
considered them with the sustained attention which 
he devoted to his political writing. Nor does it appear 
that he had so important an influence upon succeeding 
schools of thought in this as in the other direction. 
But he at any rate laid down in a most unflinching 
and vigorous fashion certain doctrines which, to say 
the least, startled his contemporaries, and so far must 
have done them good. Theologians and moralists 
paid him the compliment of taking him for their 
most serious opponent. He was regarded as the 
type, though almost a solitary instance, of inter- 
necine hostility to established beliefs. Upon him, 
we may say, were concentrated the various anti- 
pathies which in the nineteenth century were pro- 
voked by evolutionism, agnosticism, materialism, and 
destructive criticism. That is to say, he personified 
the tendencies of thought which are supposed to 
result from the study, or the too exclusive study, of 
the physical sciences. I express no opinion as to 
the merits of the question involved. Everybody 
admits that the physical sciences embody a vast 
amount of definitively established truth, and that, so 
far as they are true, they cannot be inconsistent with 
any other truths. The problem is whether the alleged 
incompatibility between the conclusions of legitimate 
science and those of the accepted theology is really 
insuperable, or only appears to be insuperable when 
the man of science reads a false interpretation into 
his doctrines. 

Now Hobbes, according to the judgment of con- 



76 HOBBES [chap. 

temporaries, interpreted the scientific principles of 
his day in a sense which made them totally irrecon- 
cilable with orthodox belief, and anticipated with 
great penetration some inferences which in later 
years have shocked and alarmed believers. How far 
Hobbes himself admitted or denied this will appear 
presently. In any case he represents the first definite 
emergence in English thought of an antagonism which 
in later generations was to develop and to acquire an 
absorbing interest. The scientific impulse of the time 
had found its English prophet in Bacon. Whatever 
his failure in the attempt to lay down the true 
scientific method, his surpassing literary power en- 
abled him to make a most imposing forecast of the 
coming empire of man over nature. The men who 
founded the Eoyal Society could appeal to Bacon's 
vast reputation as sanctioning their enterprise. Now 
they could do so without incurring any suspicion as 
to their orthodoxy. Boyle, for example, one of the 
chief leaders, was as conspicuous for his piety as for 
his scientific zeal. There was nothing objectionable 
in the precepts which direct a careful and methodical 
study of phenomena in order to discover their laws. 
" Baconian induction " implied no conception either of 
the heterodox or of the orthodox variety. It rather 
suggested that we should attend to facts and leave 
ultimate principles to take care of themselves. Bacon 
denounced the old scholastic subtleties which had 
shown their futility in dealing with the physical sciences, 
and by so doing he might in some degree discredit the 
dogmatic system of theology associated with the old 
philosophy. That, however, so it seemed to the more 
liberal thinkers of the time, did not imply an attack on 



it.] THE WORLD 77 

natural theology, but rather the need of disengaging 
its truth from the scholastic logomachies by which it 
has been overlaid. The ablest English divines of the 
next generation sympathised with that doctrine. 

In Hobbes the spirit of science first becomes 
dogmatic and aggressive. He lays down with the 
utmost calmness and confidence the most startling 
principles. He thinks them so reasonable and obvious 
that you might expect even a bishop to accept them. 
They are demonstrated once for all. The point of 
view from which he started is indicated by his two 
significant anecdotes. The scientific method which 
impresses him is that of which Euclid gave him the 
typical instance. It is a deductive method, which 
develops all its conclusions from undeniable first 
principles. He scorns the accumulation of experi- 
ments. The difficulty which impresses him, is not 
that we have not sufficient data, but that we do not 
reason upon them with rigorous accuracy. In the 
second place, the one universal phenomenon is motion. 
We see things changing their positions relatively to 
each other, and in the last analysis, that is really all 
that we can know or measure. Contemporary develop- 
ments of science have impressed these convictions upon 
him. His view of them is sufficiently indicated in the 
" Epistle Dedicatory " to the De Corpore. He is struck 
by the novelty of science. The ancients, indeed, had 
done much in geometry, and left in it " a most perfect 
pattern " of their logic. Astronomy only began when 
Copernicus revived an ancient opinion which had been 
" strangled by a snare of words." Copernicus led to 
Galileo, whose discovery was the " first that opened 
to us the gate of natural knowledge universal, which 



- * 



78 HOBBES [chap. 

is the knowledge of the nature of motion." The 
" science of man's body " was first discovered with 
" admirable sagacity " by Harvey — " the only man I 
know that, conquering envy, has established a new 
doctrine in his lifetime." Extraordinary advances 
have been made by Kepler and by Hobbes's "two 
friends, Gassendi and Mersenne," to whom he would 
have no doubt added Descartes, had Descartes been 
equally friendly. " Civil philosophy is much younger, 
as being no older (I say it provoked, and that my 
detractors may know how little they have wrought 
upon me) than my own book De Give." "There 
walked in old Greece, indeed, a certain phantasm 
for superficial gravity, though full within of fraud 
and filth, a little like philosophy ; " this was adopted 
by the first doctors of the Church, who thus "be- 
trayed the citadel of Christianity." Into it there 
entered a theory called school divinity, walking on 
one foot firmly, which is the Holy Scripture, but 
halting on the other rotten foot, which the Apostle 
Paul called vain and might have called pernicious 
philosophy; for it has raised an infinite number of 
controversies in the Christian world concerning re- 
ligion, and from these controversies, wars. It thus 
resembles the Empusa of the comic poet, having one 
brazen leg, and the other the leg of an ass. By 
putting into a clear shape the " true method of 
natural philosophy " he will drive away the meta- 
physical confusion, " not by skirmish, but by letting 
in the light upon her." The "Empusa" is to be 
exorcised because she has strangled the infant science 
by words. But what we have to do is not to follow 
her through the monstrous labyrinth of sophistry 



ii.] THE WORLD 79 

which she has spun over the world, but simply to 
use our eyes and to look at the plain facts. 

We have raised a dust, as Berkeley said afterwards, 
and complained that we cannot see. Philosophy is now 
among men, is the opening remark of the De Corpore, as 
corn and wine were in the world in ancient time. There 
were always vines and ears of corn ; but as they were 
not cared for, men had to live upon acorns. So every 
man has natural reason ; but for want of improving it, 
most men have to be content with the acorns of " daily 
experience." They show sounder judgment than those 
who (like the schoolmen) " do nothing but dispute and 
wrangle like men that are not well in their wits." 
Hobbes proposes to "lay open the few and first ele- 
ments of philosophy in general as so many seeds from 
which jjure and true philosophy may hereafter spring 
up by little and little." He will show how to culti- 
vate the corn and wine. Science, we have been told, 
is nothing but organised common-sense. And Hobbes 
anticipates this dictum. 

Thus Hobbes's method is to be that which has 
already borne fruit in the hands of the great thinkers 
of the time. Geometry has already made a fresh 
start. Copernicus has shown how the stars move. 
Galileo will enable us to explain how each movement 
is determined by previous movements. The science 
of astronomy will thus be constituted by the help of 
geometry. Then Harvey's great discovery suggests 
that the human body also is a mechanism, the various 
movements of which must be explicable on the same 
principles. The circulation of the blood, like the 
revolution of the planets, is simply a case of motion ; 
and when we have the facts and the laws of nature, 



80 HOBBES [chap. 

we shall be able to deduce all physiological pheno- 
mena, like all astronomical phenomena, by the help 
of geometry. Hobbes assumes also that the same 
methods will enable us to construct his "civil" 
philosophy. 

Meanwhile we see the general impression made 
upon Hobbes by his studies in Euclid, and by his 
doctrine that motion is the universal fact. It means, 
in short, that he holds that the aim of all philosophy 
is to give a mechanical theory of the universe. That, 
again, is to say that he sees clearly what is in fact 
the ultimate aim of all the physical sciences. The 
scientific inquirer endeavours as far as possible to give 
the rules embodied in all physical phenomena in terms 
of time and space. He imagines a bewildering dance 
of innumerable atoms, lying somehow behind the 
visible world, moving in different directions, colliding, 
combining and separating and going through the most 
complicated evolutions. Perhaps the ignorant person, 
or the profound metaphysician, may decline to believe 
that there are any such things at all, or, at any rate 
to believe that they are the only realities. But even 
if they do not exist, they have to be invented. Our 
justification for creating them is that they enable us 
to state the rules by which, from a given state of 
things, we can accurately foretell the future or go 
back to the past. They may be only a working 
hypothesis, or may be realities which might con- 
ceivably become visible or tangible. The method, 
however, in any case, implies that the ultimate 
problem is, as Hobbes said, one of geometry. The 
atoms have no properties, except the property of 
embodying certain laws of motion ; and the whole 



ii.] THE WORLD 81 

problem becomes that of stating how one state of 
motion will pass into another. That is to say, it is 
ultimately a problem of geometry or the measurement 
of spaces. So far Hobbes agrees with Descartes : 
" Give me space and movement, and I will make 
the world." Toute ma physique n'est autre chose que la 
geometrie. Hobbes undoubtedly was not so good a 
geometer as Descartes ; but they fully agree in prin- 
ciple. " They that study natural philosophy," says 
Hobbes, " study in vain, except they begin at geo- 
metry ; and such writers and disputers thereof as are 
ignorant of geometry do but make their hearers and 
readers lose their time." Civil philosophy must, as he 
adds, be based upon physics, and therefore upon geo- 
metry. Both Hobbes and Descartes accepted Harvey's 
discovery as giving a mechanical explanation of physio- 
logical phenomena. Descartes's doctrine that animals 
are automatic was equally applicable to the working 
of the human body, and Huxley has set forth with 
his usual vigour and clearness the importance of this 
doctrine in the development of physiology. 

Upon such questions I can say nothing ; and Hobbes 
did not distinguish himself in that direction. But the 
next peculiarity of his philosophy is marked by his 
divergence from Descartes. In his objections to the 
Meditations, Hobbes criticises the famous "je pense : 
done je suis" "I think" and "I am thinking," he 
says, mean the same. Therefore the conclusion is 
good : " If I think, I am." But it does not follow that 
U I " who think am a spirit or a soul. On the contrary, 
he declares, it would seem to follow that a thing which 
thinks is something corporeal. I do not think that I 
think, I simply think ; or thought and its object are 

Q 



82 HOBBES [chap. 

one. Descartes complains that Hobbes has not 
attended to a later passage in the Meditations, which 
proves that the soul or thinking thing cannot be 
corporeal. I need not go into the arguments. The 
difference is indeed of that radical kind in which 
argument rarely produces agreement. Descartes con- 
ceives himself to have proved that the soul and the 
body are of diametrically opposite natures, and though 
he believes in both, thinks that our conviction of the 
existence of the soul is more fundamental than our 
conviction of the existence of the body. The complete 
antithesis between the spiritual and the natural world 
became of course a cardinal point of his system, and 
generations of metaphysicians were to puzzle them- 
selves over the nature of the intimate relation which, 
as he also held, binds them in inseparable unity. 

Hobbes, on the other hand, seems simply to ignore 
this contrast. He takes for granted, for he scarcely 
argues the question, that the material world is the 
only world. In a later Objection, he gives it as his 
own opinion that spirit is nothing but a movement 
in certain parts of the organism. In other words, 
thought, as well as every physical process, is a species 
of the universal genus " motion." Hobbes is so far a 
simple and thoroughgoing materialist. That of course 
simplifies things. The whole of knowledge represents 
for him an extension of the physical sciences. The 
theory of the human body and the theory of the 
political body are more complicated than the theory of 
the stars ; but we still have to do with nothing but 
motion, though in forms more intricate and difficult to 
measure. " The whole mass of things that are," he 
says in the Leviathan, " is corporeal, that is to say, 



ii.] THE WORLD 83 

body ; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, 
length, breadth, and depth ; also every part of body is 
likewise body, and hath the like dimensions ; and con- 
sequently every part of the universe is body, and that 
which is not body is no part of the universe ; and 
because the universe is all, that which is no part of 
it is nothing ; and consequently nowhere. Kor does it 
follow from hence," he adds, " that spirits are nothing : 
for they have dimensions and are therefore really 
bodies, though that name in common speech be given 
to such bodies only as are visible and palpable, that is, 
that have some degree of opacity." The last sentence is 
required by a consideration which frequently hampers 
his utterance. He is bound to admit that spirits exist, 
for spirits are mentioned in Scripture, and, for what- 
ever reason, he will not contradict Scripture. But 
no proof can be given of existences of which it is 
impossible to have "natural evidence." All evidence 
appeals to the senses ; but a spirit is taken to be that 
which does not " work upon the sense," and is there- 
fore not " conceptible." When we use such words as 
" living, sensible, rational, hot, cold, moved, quiet," as 
he calmly remarks, the word " matter " or " body " is 
understood, all such " being names of matter." In 
" natural discourse," therefore, a " spirit " means a 
phantasm — a dream mistaken for a reality. The 
spirits mentioned in supernatural discourse must 
exist ; they must therefore be bodies, for nothing 
exists except bodies ; but they can be kept out of 
harm's way. As bodies they must be space-filling; 
but they are made of such subtle materials that they 
cannot act upon other bodies. They cannot make 
their existence known, for they cannot affect motion. 



84 HOBBES [chap. 

Motion is the cause of all things : " all mutation is 
motion; motion can have no cause except motion;" 
and these flimsy entities are in the universe without 
taking part in it. For us they are nonentities. If 
motion can be caused by motion alone, that motion 
can cause nothing but motion. Hobbes's opponents 
inferred that, as thought is not motion, it must 
have some other cause, or inhere in a subject which 
is not material. Hobbes infers that as nothing 
can exist which is not material, thought must itself 
be motion. 

This is really Hobbes's starting-point and guiding 
principle. Man is an automaton ; thought is a motion 
in his brain ; all his actions can be explained by the 
laws of motion, like the motion of a clock or of the 
Chatsworth waterworks. In the attempt to carry out 
this conception thoroughly, Hobbes gets into various 
difficulties. A modern materialist may perhaps urge 
that the difficulties can be surmounted by a fuller 
knowledge of physical science. The opposite explana- 
tion is that the initial assumption is radically false, 
and that Hobbes's merit, as Professor Hoeffding says, 
is that his consistent adoption of it brings out the 
inevitable failure of a thoroughgoing materialism. 

To understand him we must begin by granting his 
postulate. Let us admit provisionally that man is 
simply an automaton and yet that he can somehow 
think, feel, reason, and become a philosopher. 

First of all, however, Hobbes explains what is the 
aim of his philosophy. Philosophy, according to him, 
means a knowledge of the effects which will be produced 
by given causes, or, conversely, of the causes which have 
produced given effects. We may trace the working of 



ii.] THE WORLD 85 

the mechanism in order to make use of it for our own 
purposes. Philosophy then is strictly " practical " or 
"utilitarian," to use the common phrases. The "in- 
ward glory and triumph of mind" arising from our 
mastery of some abstruse question would not of itself 
repay the pains necessary to obtain the result. "The 
end of knowledge is power : " a phrase which recalls 
Bacon's famous saying. 1 Both Bacon and Hobbes desire 
knowledge to enable men to rule the forces of nature. 
The utility of " natural philosophy n appears in such 
arts as navigation, architecture, and so forth ; and we 
may see what they have done for mankind by com- 
paring the civilised races of Europe with the Americans 
and " those that live near the poles." Since all men, as 
Hobbes assumes, have the same faculties, the whole 
difference is due to philosophy. "Moral and civil 
philosophy," however, is equally useful, though its 
utility must be measured not by the commodities which 
it gives but by the calamities which it obviates. The 
worst of calamities is war, especially civil war. From 
war proceed " slaughter, solitude, and the want of all 
things." All men know these to be evil. Why then 
do wars continue ? Because men do not know the 
causes of war and peace. Few men, that is to say, 



1 " Knowledge is power," as Hamilton points out (D. 
Stewart's Works, v. 38), is a running title in the Advance- 
ment of Learning and may not be Bacon's own phrase. How- 
ever, in the MecUtationes Sacrae we may see in a theological 
context ipsa scientia potestas est : and this in the translation 
becomes " knowledge itself is power." See Bacon's Works, 
ed. Spedding, vii. 241, 253. It has often been denied that 
Bacon used the words, as in Bulwer's My Novel, where the 
wise confute a young man who lias rashly adopted them. Any- 
how, as Hamilton says, they clearly represent Bacon's meaning. 



86 HOBBES [chap. 

have learnt the " duties which unite and keep men in 
peace." Now "the knowledge of these duties is moral 
philosophy." Hobbes thus holds substantially a doc- 
trine which was characteristic of a later period and 
was vigorously expounded by Buckle. The growth of 
civilisation means essentially the growth of knowledge. 
Knowledge will not only enable us to apply mechani- 
cal inventions, but will show the identity of human 
interests and lead to the extirpation of war. Hobbes's 
view of the methods by which this consummation 
was to be reached differed materially from that of the 
Utilitarians of the middle of the nineteenth century, 
but the general conception is the same. 

He proceeds to define the "subject" of philosophy. 
It has nothing to do with theology (for pretty obvious 
reasons), nor with the doctrine of angels, nor of things 
(if such there be) which are not bodies, nor with 
revelation which does not appeal to reason, nor with 
astrology and other " divinations which are not well 
grounded " ; nor with the doctrine of " God's worship," 
which is the " object of faith, not of knowledge." 
Moreover it excludes " history as well natural as 
political, though most useful (nay necessary) to philo- 
sophy " ; for such knowledge is " but experience or 
authority, and not ratiocination." Philosophy deals 
exclusively with the " generation and properties " of 
the two chief kinds of bodies — the natural body, a 
work of nature, and the commonwealth, the body 
made by the agreement of men. " Civil philosophy," 
which deals with the last, is divisible into two ; 
" ethics," which deals with human nature, and 
"politics," which deals with men as citizens. The 
treatise, therefore, which gives the general principles 



ii.] THE WORLD 87 

applicable to all philosophy is called De Corpore, since 
"body" includes all that is knowable. 



2. Logic 

The world is made of unchangeable but moving 
bodies. All that happens is the transformation of one 
set of motions into another according to certain fixed 
laws. Somehow or another we can ascertain these 
laws, and, when duly systematised, they become "phi- 
losophy," or a statement of necessary truths. What 
then is truth ? Hobbes observes that " truth is not an 
affection of the thing, but of the proposition concern- 
ing it." The word " true " is often, but inaccurately, 
opposed to " feigned." But, properly speaking, if we 
say that a ghost or the image in a mirror is not a man, 
we do not assert that the ghost is " false," but that the 
proposition " a ghost is a man " is false. " A ghost is 
(still) a very ghost." Truth and falsehood belong to 
the reasoning process which is peculiar to man, upon 
whoni it confers the privilege of framing " general 
rules." This privilege, indeed, is " allayed by 
another"; and that is by the privilege of absurdity, 
to which no living creature is subject but man only. 
And of men "those are of all most subject to it that 
profess philosophy." Nothing, as Cicero said, can be 
so absurd as not to be found in their books. Hobbes 
will explain the source of their errors. 

Meanwhile we have a problem. Eeality belongs to 
bodies ; truth to propositions or thought. What then 
is that which thinks ? Hobbes has replied that it is 
body, and thought is a movement in the body. But it 
is plain that if this be true, the thinking thing does 



88 HOBBES [chap. 

not directly perceive its own nature. Thought does 
not present itself as a movement. We are not con- 
scious of the physical processes which somehow con- 
stitute or underlie the thinking process. It follows 
that as thoughts are not bodies, they are unreal — mere 
nonentities or " phantasms," as Hobbes generally puts 
it. Eeality thus seems to be entirely divorced from 
truth. The thought-process may be determined by 
motion, but, as immediately known, it is a set of 
imaginary phantasmagoria playing over the surface of 
things but itself unreal. The " soul " is real in so 
far as it is material ; but the ideal world made of 
phantasms is unreal. Yet somehow the soul manages 
to reason by help of the phantasms, and to discover 
the rules of bodily movement. The problem remains, 
how this process is to be explained. Hobbes's answer 
gives his theory of logic, and forms the first part of the 
De Corpore. The title Computatio sive Logica indicates 
his peculiar view. All ratiocination, he declares, is 
computing. Reasoning is addition or subtraction. 
Arithmeticians add or subtract numbers ; geome- 
tricians add lines and figures ; logicians add names to 
make affirmations ; affirmations to make syllogisms ; 
and syllogisms to make demonstrations. The type of 
reasoning for him is still Euclid. Adding and sub- 
tracting suggest the process by which the square on 
the hypothenuse in his favourite proposition may be 
cut up and put together again so as to form the 
squares on the two sides. He had a prejudice against 
the new methods by which algebraic calculation was 
being substituted for the direct intuitive methods of 
geometry, and to the arithmetic which, in the hands 
of the detestable Wallis and his like, was leading to 



ii.] THE WORLD 89 

humbug about infinitesimals. Arithmetic, however, 
seems best to illustrate his view. Number, as he 
would say, is not "an affection of the thing." The 
same thing may be one or twelve, as we count in feet 
or inches. The unit is arbitrary. And yet number- 
ing enables us to state the most essential properties of 
things. Ten or a hundred by itself is a mark of no 
particular body, and is therefore a nonentity. But it 
meant something very real that Hobbes's hundred a 
year came to just ten times ten pounds. Keasoning 
in general is counting with names or numbers. 
" Words," as he says, in one of his pithiest aphorisms, 
"are wise men's counters; they do but reckon with 
them, but they are the money of fools." The remark 
has a wide application ; and, in this case, the " fools " 
are those who talk scholastic jargon. But it states 
his general principle. The "use of names in register- 
ing our thoughts," as he remarks elsewhere, "is in 
nothing so evident as in numbering." Once men 
could not count, except on their fingers, as is shown 
by the decimal notation. The names learnt in the 
right order enable us to perform all the operations of 
arithmetic. 

Since the names are thus the counters, out of which 
we frame propositions, we have to ask what is a 
name ? Hobbes gives a famous definition. "A name 
is a word taken at pleasure, to serve for a mark which 
may raise in our mind a tli ought like to some thought 
we had before, and which being (disposed in speech 
and 1 ) pronounced to others, may be a sign to them of 
what the speaker had or had not before in his mind." 
Names are thus "marks to ourselves." "How incon- 
1 Omitted by error in the English version. 



90 HOBBES [chap. 

stant and fading men's thoughts are, and how much 
the recovery of them depends upon chance, there is 
none but knows by infallible experience in himself ! " 
No man remembers numbers without the names of 
numbers disposed in order and learnt by heart. The 
name recalls not only the thing but the general rule. 
The results given by reasoning without such helps 
will presently slip from us. We should get on very 
slowly if we had to find out the multiplication table 
every time we did a sum. " Marks " are thus neces- 
sary to recall thoughts, and become " signs " when we 
teach them to others, which is an essential condition 
of the preservation and growth of science. To serve 
as signs, again, it is necessary that names as marks 
should be " disposed and ordered in speech." To 
speak rationally, you must not only renew the memory 
of a thing, but say what you are thinking of its rela- 
tion to other things. For that purpose, again, words 
may be useful which are not names of things, but only 
of " fictions and phantasms of things." That words are 
an essential instrument of thought which, without 
them, could not, to say the least, get beyond rudi- 
mentary and vague inferences is, I take it, a very 
sound doctrine. Hobbes did good service by directing 
attention emphatically to it. He managed, however, 
to give it a strange twist. Signs, he remarks, may be 
" natural " or " arbitrary." The cloud is a natural 
sign of rain ; a bush at a tavern door is an arbitrary 
sign of wine to be sold. Now words are clearly 
" arbitrary," as was signally proved in the Garden 
of Eden, and again, at the Tower of Babel. This 
is of course obvious. If "homo" meant in Latin 
what "man" means in English, it is plain that the 



ii.] THE WORLD 91 

sound employed as a mark varies " arbitrarily." But 
Hobbes sometimes speaks as if, because language is 
the instrument of reasoning, and yet uses arbitrary 
marks, reasoning gives arbitrary results. So, he says 
in his fourth objection to Descartes, reasoning 
may be simply an assemblage and concatenation of 
names by the word "is." 1 If that be so, he says, 
reason does not conclude to the nature of things, but 
only to their names ; that is, it shows whether we are 
connecting them according to the conventions which 
we have made at fancy about their significations. 
Descartes naturally replies that we reason about 
things, not names ; and that a Frenchman and a 
German may have the same thoughts though they 
express them in entirely different words. Three and 
two, says Hobbes elsewhere, make five, because men 
have agreed that " five " shall be the name of as many 
units as there are in three and two. That explains 
why we say " two " and " three " instead of " deux " 
and " trois," but does not prove that we can alter the 
truth expressed by arbitrary sounds. Definitions are 
"truths constituted arbitrarily by the inventors of 
speech, and therefore not to be demonstrated." We 
make such truths ourselves (vera esse facimus nosmet 
ipsi) by our consent to the use of names. 

The doctrine, so stated, seems too absurd even for a 
philosopher (as Hobbes would have said), and certainly 
does not correspond to his own conviction of the in- 
fallibility of his demonstrations. It is inconsistent too 

1 He is careful to point out that the copula is not necessary, 
and that the meaning might be expressed by simply putting 
two names together. A mistake on this point leads to the inven- 
tion of such scholastic terms as " entity.' ' 



92 HOBBES [chap. 

with much that he says elsewhere. It seems to be a 
trick played upon him by his logic, for trying to give 
a fall to his antagonists he loses his own balance. His 
general line of thought is intelligible. Philosophy, we 
see, according to him, is formed by a chain of true 
propositions, linked or (as he puts it) added together. 
Each link is a syllogism ; and reasoning demonstrates 
that, if the first propositions be true, all the dependent 
propositions must be equally true. Language is the 
essential instrument of the process, though language, 
as he admits, is not necessary to thought, only to the 
articulate thought which leads to science. We make 
inferences from "natural signs " ; rain, for example, is 
suggested by clouds, though the inference is often 
erroneous, and no experience can be demonstrative. 
Again, a man though deaf and dumb may observe 
that the angles of a particular triangle are equal to 
two right angles ; but only the man who has the use 
of speech can prove that the property is necessarily 
true of all triangles. " Experience concludeth nothing 
universally." It tells us that day and night have 
always followed each other ; not that they always will 
follow. 

Now, though "experience" suggests a kind of 
reasoning, it is only with the use of language that 
" ratiocination " properly begins. Science embodies 
" ratiocination." The validity of ratiocination depends 
entirely upon the correct use of its essential instru- 
ment, language. This, as Hobbes expresses it, means 
that the whole process is dependent upon definitions. 
If definitions were arbitrary, all science must be 
arbitrary. Nothing could be further from his mind 
than this conclusion, and what he really means may 



ii.] THE WORLD 93 

be gathered from trie purpose of his argument. 
Philosophy aims first at deducing effects from causes. 
Definitions are "the primary propositions" from 
which this process starts. The definitions, therefore, 
of " all things that are caused, must consist of such 
names as express the cause or matter of generation." 
When we have defined the circle as the figure made 
by " the circumduction of a body whereof one end 
remains unmoved," we can deduce all the properties 
of the circle. Geometrical relations enable us to 
determine the motions of the body, and therefore the 
relations of cause and effect. Theories of motion, of 
" physics," and ultimately of ethics and politics, are 
founded upon geometry, and geometry itself follows 
from the definitions. Euclid, it is true, lays down 
certain axioms, but Hobbes argues that the axioms 
themselves follow from the definitions. He deduces 
the axiom, for example, that " a whole is greater than 
any part thereof " from the definition of " greater." 
Demonstration requires ratiocination, and ratiocination 
is only possible when we start from definitions which 
are " nothing but the explication of our simple con- 
ceptions." The "principles of ratiocination consist in 
our own understanding, that is, in the legitimate use 
of such words as we ourselves constitute." The 
meaning seems to be that geometrical truths owe 
their peculiar certainty to the fact that geometry is 
through and through an intellectual construction. 
We can understand it, because in some sense we make 
it. The definitions, then, are not " arbitrary " in the 
sense that any other combination of words would do 
as well, or that the properties of a figure would alter 
if we defined it differently. By " arbitrary " he means 



94 HOBBES [chap. 

rather " artificial/' or somehow made by us and not 
by the things. The words are mere counters, or 
instruments for calculating which we devise for the 
purpose. We make them as a workman makes keys 
for opening locks. He may make what tools he 
pleases, but it does not follow that they will serve his 
purpose equally well. We make the key ourselves, 
but all keys will not open the lock. 

We may define a figure by any of the properties 
peculiar to it ; we may regard a circle as made by the 
revolution of the radius or as the figure which will 
enclose the maximum area by its circumference. But 
we must somehow find the mode which will actually 
generate it. The definition marks the point at which 
we have got hold of the thing by its right end, or have 
so organised our " simple conceptions " that they ex- 
plain the " generation " of the more complex. The 
mind must find the appropriate instruments, though 
when Hobbes thinks of them as of simple creations out 
of nothing, he uses " arbitrary V in an apparently absurd 
sense. His theory thus becomes feasible, and suggests 
a real answer to the problem as to the special pre- 
rogative of mathematical proof. How far it contains 
truth is a question which I must leave to writers who 
can walk confidently in the perplexing border region 
between mathematics and metaphysics. 1 

1 One remark may be made parenthetically. Dugald Stewart, 
in a passage which had a great effect upon J. S. Mill (as Mill 
tells us in his autobiography), takes Hobbes's view of definitions 
in geometry. Definitions serve generally to prevent ambiguity, 
and in geometry they serve as the real principles of our reason- 
ing. He then remarks that Condillac has said that propositions, 
equations, and judgments are at bottom the same thing. This 
he ridicules, observing that Condillac would be surprised to 



V 



it.] THE WORLD 95 

To complete our sketch of his logical scheme we 
must glance at the process by which we get from the 
definitions to the demonstrated truths. Names are put 
together to form propositions and propositions to form 
syllogisms. Hobbes accepts the ordinary rules about 
syllogisms, of which he gives a brief summary. The 
question remains what, according to him, is the 
ultimate nature of the process. Why is the syllogism 
demonstrative ? Now, in the first place, as a thorough 
nominalist, he denies the existence of any " universals " 
except names. Man is the name of Peter ; John, and 
so forth, but there is no such thing as an universal 
man. We have an " idea " of one man, for every idea 
is one and of one thing. There is no " idea " of man 
in general, and the mistake arises from supposing that 
what' is true of the name is true of the idea. In 
" nature," that is, there are only individuals, not classes. 
Now in the syllogism we seem to learn something from 
referring the individual to a class. Since Peter is a 
man, he has the properties of a man. What, then, is 
the implied logic? Hobbes's answer is simple. A 
proposition is true " when the predicate is the name of 
everything of which the subject is the name." "Man 
is a living creature," is true, "because everything 
that is called man is also called living creature." The 
syllogism carries us a step further by " adding " an 

find that he was reviving the "obsolete conceit" of an old 
English writer, i.e., Hobbes. Evidently, the De Corpore had 
fallen into oblivion in Britain, though in Stewart's time, if 
not in Condillac's, it was exciting great interest in France. 
Stewart himself, it would seem, had hardly got beyond the first 
chapter, or he certainly would have been candid enough to 
mention that he too was reviving a doctrine of the old 
writer. 



96 HOBBES [chap. 

affirmation. Take, for example, " every living creature 
is a body ; man is a living creature ; therefore man 
is a body." The minor premise is true, if the predi- 
cate " living creature " is a name of the same thing 
as the subject (man). The major premise is true if 
the predicate (body) is a name of the same thing as the 
subject (living creature). Therefore " the three names 
are also names of the one and the same thing," or 
" man is a body " is a true proposition. He goes on to 
explain what " passes in the mind " when we syllogise. 
We "conceive the image of a man speaking" and 
remember that " what so appears is called man " ; we 
have the image of the same man moving, and remember 
that what so appears is called " living creature " ; and 
finally the image " filling space " is called " body." 
Thus the three names are names of the same things. 
Hobbes has told us before that the proposition " man is 
a living creature " is true because it pleased man to 
impose both these names on " one thing," and declares 
that the truth is therefore " arbitrary." 

This queer doctrine still entangles him. If we only 
call a thing a "man" which we also call a "living 
creature," the proposition " man is a living creature " 
must be verbally true. We have agreed to put a mark 
only where there is another mark. But that does not 
explain why "man" applies to John, Thomas, and 
Peter, nob to a stick or a dog, nor what is meant by 
calling these three men " living creatures." Hobbes's 
account of what passes in the mind implies indeed 
that the words are in some way defined. We call 
that " man " which has the faculty of speech, and that 
" living creature " which moves ; and possibly by 
remembering Hobbes's doctrine as to definitions we 



V 



ii.] THE WORLD 97 

may attribute to him a more rational meaning. He is 
always thinking of his Euclid. The definition of a 
circle tells us how it is generated, and enables us to 
deduce all its properties, or to infer that a figure which 
has one property has also the others. The different 
names describing the properties apply to the same 
thing, though the " thing " is not a mere simple unit 
but a complex of relations. If then "man" and 
"living creature" are modifications of "body," and 
if we could tell how they are "generated" in con- 
formity with certain laws of motion and of various 
combinations of matter, we could deduce all the pro- 
perties of the species from simple definitions, and see 
how one attribute such as "speaking" was a product 
under certain conditions of "moving" or "living." 
The premises of the syllogism would express the rela- 
tions between the various classes thus formed. The 
whole proceeding is for Hobbes "arbitrary," because 
the process is carried out in the world of " ideas " or 
" phantasms " which we make or organise for ourselves 
— for thoughts are not "things," but unreal entities, 
which for some reasons that he has not explained, 
correspond in some way to the facts. Moreover, in 
the case of " syllogising," we come to a difficulty of 
which he will, as we shall see, try to find some solution. 
A phenomenon is presented to us in the concrete, and 
we do not know the underlying process by which it 
has been evolved out of the simpler elements. We 
cannot in the least say how faculty of speech is related 
to life in general. We can only say that somehow or 
other, one thing or one name includes the other : and 
that appears to be an " arbitrary " assumption made to 
enable us to reason. 



98 HOBBES [chap. 

3. Physical Science 

Whatever is the explanation of Hobbes's strange 
assumption that names must be " arbitrary " in order 
that reasoning may be demonstrative, we have the old 
difficulty. Certainty belongs to the world of thought; 
but thought is " unreal " and the words which are its 
tools can be put together at pleasure. Reality belongs 
to fact which is hidden behind the phantasms. How 
do we get across the chasm which divides them? 
What are the "things" which lie behind the veil 
of thoughts ? This leads to a further speculation. 
Hobbes tells us that the things to which we give names 
are of four kinds : bodies, phantasms, " accidents," and 
names themselves. I need say nothing of the " acci- 
dents," an irrelevant intrusion which bothers him a 
good deal. The real distinction is between bodies and 
phantasms, and the question is how they are related. 

Here we come to a remarkable result. Hobbes seems 
to be diverging from his thoroughgoing materialism. 
Geometry and the laws of motion will not be sufficient 
for the problems that meet him. Having expounded 
his logic, he comes in the second part of the De Cor- 
pore to the first grounds of philosophy. It is rather 
startling to find this rigid materialist declaring that 
time and space are, as we now say, " subjective." 
Descartes begins by doubting whether our sensations 
really prove the existence of an external world, and 
finds doubt insuperable. Hobbes begins by asking 
what would happen if we supposed the whole external 
world to be annihilated. He answers that it would 
make no difference. We should still have our " ideas 
of the world." They are mere " phantasms, happen- 



ii.] THE WORLD 99 

ing internally to him that iniagineth," but will still 
appear to be " external " and independent of the mind. 
Moreover, even if outside things are taken to remain, 
" we still compute nothing but our own phantasms." 
We mark out our measurements of the stars and the 
earth "sitting still in our closets or in the dark." 
Space is not an affection of the body. Otherwise when 
a body moved, it would carry its place away with it. 
Time is equally a phantasm. A year is time, and yet 
nobody thinks that a year is, " the accident or affection 
of any body." The past and future do not exist, and 
consequently days, months, and years must be "the 
names of computations made in our minds." He 
therefore defines space as the " phantasm of a thing 
existing without the mind simply," and time as " the 
phantasm of before and after in motion." When space 
and time are thus declared to be mere "phantasms," 
and therefore to have no existence outside of the 
mind, and when, moreover, we are told that our reason- 
ing depends entirely upon them, we are well on the way 
to Berkeley's idealism or Hume's scepticism. " Phan- 
tasms " or " ideas " — he uses both words — are the ulti- 
mate elements of our thoughts ; and it would be the 
next step to declare with Berkeley the non-existence of 
matter, while Hobbes already agrees with Hume that a 
soul is a superfluity. With Hobbes, however, body, it 
appears, is still the reality and the only reality. Space, 
he has told us, is " imaginary because a mere phantasm, 
yet that very thing which all men call so." Now sup- 
pose the thing previously annihilated to be created 
over again. Then it must, in the first place, fill some 
part of the imaginary space and, in the second place, 
must have "no dependence upon our thought." 



LofC. 



100 HOBBES [chap. 

Hence he defines body to be " that which having no 
dependence upon our thought is coincident or co- 
extended with some part of space." A body, he tells us 
afterwards, has " always the same magnitude, but does 
not keep the same place." " Place is nothing out of 
the mind, nor magnitude anything within it." " Place- 
is feigned extension, but magnitude true extension." 
Place is immovable, whereas bodies move. It appears, 
therefore, that there is real space by which the 
magnitude of any body is measured, and' space is imag- 
inary. It must, so it seems, be both purely objective 
and purely subjective. Though the phantasm is unreal, 
it somehow enables us to know the realities. 

The peculiarity of Hobbes's position is just this, 
that he does not perceive that any problem is 
raised by the contrast between soul and body — the 
world of thought and the world of things. He does 
not seek for any hypothesis, such as Spinoza's 
one substance with infinite attributes, intended to 
bring the two worlds into unity. Bodies are still 
independent of thought, and are the sole and 
absolute realities. Thought is a mere play of phan- 
tasms, which are unreal because only in the mind. 
Yet the phantasms give us knowledge of the bodies 
which go on placidly moving outside of thought ; and 
the mind, which knows only its phantasms, is aware 
of the outside world, and is itself a set of motions in 
that world. That, it seems, must be simply taken for 
granted and no explanation is required. It never 
suggests any scepticism as to the possibility of know- 
ledge. Hobbes will be as dogmatic as if no difficulty 
existed. Nobody, as is already sufficiently evident, 
could be more profoundly impressed by that conception 



ii.] THE WORLD 101 

of the universe which is indicated by such phrases as 
the "reign of law" and the "uniformity of nature." 
All phenomena without exception present themselves 
in conformity with certain general rules. The future 
could be absolutely foreseen and the past recalled if 
we had the required knowledge. From the existing 
state of the solar system, the astronomer could say 
what it was at any preceding, or what it will be at any 
succeeding epoch. These powers indeed are limited 
by the enormous complexity of the calculations and of 
the facts to which, they are applied. Other sciences are 
less perfect because they have to deal with more intri- 
cate problems, but not because any science includes 
a really arbitrary element. From the minutest to 
the most universal phenomenon, everything that will 
happen is already predetermined. The fall of a leaf 
or the explosion of a world is equally part of the 
single unalterable system of things. Spinoza was to 
give the most impressive version of a theory which 
may be appalling to some minds, and simply self- 
evident to others ; but Hobbes was not less possessed 
with the conviction than his greater follower. 

This mode of interpreting the universe is implied by 
the theory of cause and effect which he now expounds. 
As we have sufficiently seen, " all mutation is motion," 
and the changes of motion are simply the modification 
of previous motions. Cause, he says, is the aggregate 
of all the accidents of the agent and the patient. Omit- 
ting his technical word " accident," we may say that 
whatever motion takes place in a thing, is determined 
by the whole set of previous conditions. If all the 
conditions necessary for a given effect are present, it 
will " necessarily " happen ; and if one of them be 



102 HOBBES [chap. 

absent, it will necessarily not happen. Whatever 
happens has a " necessary cause," looking backwards, 
and looking forwards a necessary effect. " Causation 
and the production of effects," he adds, " consist in a 
certain continual progress." Causation, that is, is not 
with him a mere sequence of disconnected phenomena, 
but a continuous process, in which one set of motions 
is always being transformed into another. We may 
"in imagination" divide the process into two parts at 
any assumed instant ; we shall then call the preceding 
part the cause, and the succeeding part the effect. 
The same causes will of course always produce the 
same effect, since they differ in nothing but time. 
The conception of power again suggests different ways 
of looking at the same process. The "power of the 
agent " is what is called the " efficient cause." We 
use the word " power " when we are thinking of the 
future, and " cause " when we are thinking of the 
effect as already produced. The power of the patient, 
again, is what is called the "material cause," with 
reference to the effect which will be produced by the 
"efficient cause," and both together are the entire 
cause. Besides these the traditional scheme recognised 
also " formal " and " final " causes. The " formal," 
according to Hobbes, are superfluous. " When it is said 
that the essence of- a thing is the cause thereof, as 
to be rational is the cause of man, it is not intelligible ; 
for it is all one as if it were said, to be a man is the 
cause of man, which is not well said." A " final cause," 
again, "has no place but in such things as have sense 
and will," and in that case, as he undertakes to prove, 
it is an " efficient cause." 

The rejection of "final causes," Bacon's "barren 



V 



ii.] THE WORLD 103 

virgins/' is inevitable. It is indeed obvious that the 
conception is altogether out of place from Hobbes's 
point of view; that is, from a thoroughgoing 
mechanical explanation of the universe. What we 
have to do is to trace the series of movements of the 
whole set of interacting bodies. At every stage the 
motion of each body is the resultant of its own pre- 
vious movement and of the movement of the various 
bodies which have come into contact with it. Why 
does a projectile move in a certain direction and with 
a certain velocity ? The answer is given by its pre- 
vious state, and the explosive or restraining forces 
which have modified that state. Each of these forces 
means that other bodies have come into contact with 
it and modified its conduct in accordance with the 
laws of motion. So far, obviously, we have nothing 
to do with " end " in the sense of purpose. We are 
tracing a single process backwards and forwards. If, 
again, we take a mechanism, such as the clock, which 
plays so conspicuous a part in the illustration of " final 
causes/' we explain the movement of the hands by 
the various wheels, chains, and so forth which trans- 
mit motion from the weight or spring. If we trace 
the process backward, we come to the point at which 
the clock itself was put together. The cause then 
is the set of processes, including on the one hand the 
muscular movements of the clockmaker, and on the 
other, the movements impressed upon the materials. 
All that man does is to move one bit of matter to or 
from another. The clockmaker's actions, again, are 
determined by his purpose, by his "end/ 5 and the 
means which his calculations prescribe for securing the 
end. But now, according to Hobbes, the clockmaker 



104 HOBBES [chap. 

is just as much an automaton as the clock. His per- 
ceptions, calculations, and motives are movements in 
his brain, due to the impact of external bodies upon 
the organs of sense and the reaction which takes place 
in the brain. They are the " efficient cause " of the 
clock, and the so-called " final cause " is merely a name 
for the same set of processes absolutely determined by 
the preceding processes. The man desires and expects, 
but the senses and expectations are themselves part of 
the movements implied. It is clear that from Hobbes's 
point of view, the so-called " final cause " is a mere 
name for the efficient cause, considered in one relation, 
and that the whole series of events is purely mechanical. 
Hobbes, it is true, professes to believe in a Creator 
who once put the world together and must have 
intended whatever conies to pass ; but science can only 
trace the series of events and ask what was the pre- 
ceding state from which any given state is generated. 
The fact that everything was intended does not ex- 
plain how everything comes to pass ; and to diverge 
from the question how things actually happen to the 
question why they should happen, is to leave the 
ground of science and to get merely nugatory answers, 
diverting us from the right line of real investigation. 

One other point is characteristic of Hobbes's system. 
Whatever happens, he holds, happens necessarily. 
Moreover, whatever does not happen is impossible. 
" Every act which is not impossible," as he puts it, 
" shall at some time be produced." There is no 
such thing as contingency. " That is called contin- 
gent," he says, " of which the necessary cause is not yet 
perceived." That is to say, it is not only " necessary " 
that, if the solar system was put together in a certain 



ii.] THE WORLD 105 

way, certain results should follow, or that if a sparrow 
is shot, he should fall to the ground; but it is also 
necessary that the solar system should be just what it 
is, and that the sparrow and the shot should have 
come into collision just when they actually did. 

Omitting certain deviations into mathematical specu- 
lation and circle-squaring, we come in the last part of 
the De Corpore to an important step towards the 
solution of a difficulty already indicated. We have 
now to consider " Physics or the phenomena of nature." 
He gives theories of light, the tides, and gravitation, 
and it is needless to say that upon such matters it 
was impossible for him to reach any valuable results. 
His view of the proper method of treatment, however, 
implies an important doctrine. " Philosophy/' as we 
have seen, may either deduce effects from causes or 
causes from effects. Hitherto he has confined himself 
to the first — the deduction of effects from causes. He 
has been able to start from definitions — from the 
truths which we " create ourselves " — and he has, as 
he maintains, affirmed nothing except the definitions 
themselves, or the propositions which can be logically 
inferred therefrom: that is to say, "nothing which 
is not sufficiently demonstrated to all those that agree 
with me in the use of words and appellations ; for whose 
sake only I have written the same." But now we 
have to change the method. We start from "the 
appearances of nature," which are known to us by 
sense. Our first principles are not such as are im- 
pressed by definitions, " but such as being placed in 
the things themselves by the author of nature, are by 
us observed in them ; and we make use of them in 
simple and particular, not universal propositions." 



106 HOBBES [chap. 

The senses, as we have already seen, give only empirical 
knowledge, which is made up of merely probable 
statements, such as " clouds are a sign of rain," and 
cannot reveal those necessary truths of which alone 
science consists. This would be the point at which 
we might expect something about the Baconian 
methods of induction. Hobbes takes a different line. 
We are to reason about phenomena : and " of all 
phenomena or appearances which are near us, the 
most admirable is apparition itself, to fyalvevOai : 
namely, that some natural bodies have in themselves 
the patterns almost of all things, and others of none 
at all." By the patterns (exemplaria) he means the 
" phantasms " which exist only in the thinking bodies — 
in men, not in stones. What then is the cause of these 
"ideas and phantasms which are perpetually generated 
within us " ? Since they are continually changing, 
they must be due to some change "in the sentient." 
Since all change is motion, again, this implies that the 
senses are due to motion in the organs of sense. The 
object is some "remote body," from which pressure is 
propagated to the organ, and the consequent endeavour 
or reaction of the organ. " Endeavour " he has defined 
in a previous passage to be "motion made in less time 
and space than can be given ; or motion through the 
length of a point, and in an instant or point of time." 
Sense, then, is the phantasm made by the " endeavour " 
outward in the organ, which is reaction against the 
endeavour inwards from the object. Something very 
like this may be read in modern books, which tell us 
how the stimulus to the nerve transmits molecular 
movement to the brain, and sets up a reflex action. 
Hobbes, however, could only speak very vaguely, and 



i 



ii.] THE WORLD 107 

tabes for granted much now exploded physiology. He 
is a little doubtful about one point. Some philosophers 
have maintained that "all bodies are endued with sense. " 
If sense were made by reaction alone, their argument 
would be unanswerable. It is, however, the possession 
of organs by living bodies which makes the difference. 
The organs preserve the motions set up in them : 
whereas in inanimate bodies the motion or reaction 
must cease as soon as the external pressure ceases, 
and the phantasm which it causes vanishes instantane- 
ously. Sense, to be of any use in giving knowledge, 
must be accompanied with memory, for the knowledge 
which it gives depends upon the comparison of the 
phantasms. This suggests one of his significant 
phrases. " It is almost all one for a man to be always 
sensible of one and the same thing, and not to be 
sensible at all of any things," or, in his pithier Latin, 
" sentire semper idem et non sentire ad idem recidunt." 
Imagination, again, is " nothing else but sense decay- 
ing or weakened by the absence of object." The dif- 
ficulty remains, how memory, which is thus necessary 
for the comparison of phantasms and all knowledge 
derived from the senses, can be interpreted in terms 
of motion. It seems as if we still required a mind 
different from the organ to look on and compare the 
decaying senses. Self -consciousness remains a mystery. 
Hobbes answers Descartes's "Je pense" by saying 
that we cannot have a thought of a thought ; but he 
holds that memory is a feeling of a feeling. Sentire se 
sentisse, meminisse est. 

This involves another remark. Hobbes insists em- 
phatically that the phantasm is somehow quite different 
from the motion by which it is caused. He had already 



108 HOBBES [chap. 

pointed out in the Human Nature that people easily 
fancy that colour and shape belong to the object, or 
that the sound is in the bell. The opinion has been 
so long received that the contrary must seem a para- 
dox. Yet the common view involves the introduction 
of the old " species visible and intelligible " : it is " worse 
than a paradox — an impossibility." The colour and 
" image " are " nothing without us." They are appari- 
tions due to the motions in the brain. 1 The senses are 
deceptive, as when men "divers times" see objects 
double, or take a reflected image for a reality, or see 
a flash of light from a blow on the eye. The same is 
true of the other senses. Smells and tastes vary from 
man to man. The heat which we feel from the fire is 
manifestly in us and not in the fire, for it gives pleasure 
and pain, " whereas in the coal there is no such thing." 
The "paradox" is now a familiar truth. Hobbes 
seems to go beyond his immediate successors. They 
would admit that the so-called " secondary qualities," 
colour, and so forth, are purely subjective; but the 
primary qualities, space and solidity, seemed to have 
superior claim to " objective reality." Hobbes observes 
that place and time, that is to say, magnitude and 
duration, " are only our own fancies of a body simply 
so called ; " that is, of a body considered without refer- 
ence to its other properties. 

All our knowledge of phenomena depends upon the 
senses, and what the senses present to us are simply 
the unreal phantasms, upon which, it would seem, no 

iln a dedicatory letter of an unprinted treatise upon optics, 
he says that he had stated this theory to Newcastle about 
1630; and appeals to him as a witness: the same doctrine 
having been since published by another. 



ii.] THE WORLD 109 

real science or body of demonstrable truths can be 
erected. The cause of the phantasms, again, is the 
"endeavour" of the organ — infinitesimal movements 
which take place within the length of a point. Hobbes 
here denies emphatically that " infinite " has any real 
meaning beyond "indefinite," whether indefinitely 
great or small. Men who profess to reason about the 
infinite and eternal are "not idiots, but, which makes 
the absurdity unpardonable, geometricians, and such 
as take upon them to be judges." They get entangled 
in words to which there is no corresponding idea, and 
"are forced either to speak something absurd, or, 
which they love worse, to hold their peace." No 
limits, however, may be assigned to possible greatness 
or smallness. Microscopes now show things a hundred 
thousand times bigger than they appear to bare eyes, 
and might be made so as to magnify each part a 
hundred thousand times more. So we now know that 
the distance from the earth to the sun is but as a point 
in comparison with the distance from the sun to the 
fixed stars. Hobbes was impressed by these recent 
revelations of the enormous vistas opened by early 
science, which have become still more impressive as 
science has grown. They suggested to him the im- 
possibility of building up scientific knowledge on the 
direct basis of observation. Everything depends upon 
motion ; but the motions which are causes of the phan- 
tasms or of natural phenomena are too infinitesimal 
to be perceived. Their existence may be inferred, but 
their precise nature can only be guessed. When, 
therefore, we proceed from the phenomena given by 
sense to the causes, we can no longer start from the 
definitions which, in the previous inquiry, state our 



110 HOBBES [chap. 

first principles. We have instead of that method to 
start from hypotheses. Hobbes aims at showing some 
" ways and means by which they (appearances) may 
be, I do not say they are, generated." He ends his 
discussion of the phenomena by declaring that the 
hypotheses which he has assumed are " both possible 
and easy to be comprehended," and that he has reasoned 
rightly from them. " If any other man will demonstrate 
the same and greater things from other hypotheses, 
there will be greater praise and thanks due to him 
than I demand for myself, provided his hypotheses 
are conceivable." At any rate he has got rid of 
empty words, such as " substantial forms," " incorpo- 
real substances," " antipathy," " sympathy," and 
" occult quality." 

So far it seems that Hobbes's method was that of 
modern sciences. Their aim, like his, is to give a 
mathematical theory of the various natural forces, 
such as heat, light, and electricity. They begin by a 
hypothesis about atoms and molecules which must be 
conceivable, and represent such properties of matter 
as we know to exist, although no direct observations 
can reveal them. If, again, these assumptions enable 
us to formulate the observed " laws," and to predict 
what will happen in other cases, and if no other 
assumptions can satisfy the conditions, we regard the 
successful assumptions as proved, or at least as pro- 
visionally established, though, it may be, in need of 
modification or of some further assumptions which 
may make them more complete. The difference is 
that the vast improvement both in instruments of 
observation and in methods of mathematical calcula- 
tion enable us to apply incomparably more searching 



ii.] THE WORLD 111 

tests to our hypotheses, as well as to gain confidence 
from the reciprocal support given to each other by 
different departments of investigation. Hobbes had 
to be vague and audacious, and make erroneous physi- 
cal assumptions. He was still in the period of Des- 
cartes's vortices, and could not anticipate Newton's 
theory of gravitation. 

His physical speculations have therefore no interest, 
except as specimens of the early guessing with which 
men had to be content at the dawn of science. The 
general conception of the possibility of working out 
mathematical theories of physical sciences shows that 
he was fully awake to the most important movement 
of thought in his own day, and ready, in spite of his 
odd misconceptions, to adopt the results of the great 
teachers, such as Galileo and Harvey. But we have 
now to look at another point. The " motions" or 
"endeavours" in the bodily organs which generate 
the phantasms of the senses, generate also, as he 
remarks, " another kind of sense . . . namely, the 
sense of pleasure and pain," which he fancies to pro- 
ceed from the action of the heart. This doctrine he 
takes to be favoured by Harvey's discovery. It is 
clear, however, that here we come to a difficulty. 
What we know directly are the phantasms : the sensa- 
tions of light, heat, and so forth, or the pleasures and 
pains which are indissolubly connected with certain 
sense-given phenomena. Now if we could discover 
what are the motions which take place when we see 
or hear or feel pain or pleasure, there is still a gap, 
corresponding to his remark about the to <j>aiv£o-dai.. 
Why a sensation of light should follow a motion in 
the optic nerve, or pain or pleasure be connected with 



112 HOBBES [chap. 

certain changes in the organism, remains a mystery. 
That, in fact, is the difficulty which has been awaiting 
him all along. When he comes to his theory of human 
nature, he still tries to connect his doctrine with his 
general theory of motion in the nerves, but is forced 
to rely to some extent upon empirical psychology. He 
knows how men will act in given circumstances, not 
because he can deduce the action from any theory 
about the bodily organism, but because he observes 
that, as a matter of fact, such and such things are 
painful or pleasurable and lead to aversion or desire. 
He puts the case himself in a remarkable passage. 
The natural philosopher, as we have seen, must begin 
from geometry ; " civil and moral philosophy " properly 
depend upon natural. But, he says, " the causes of 
the motions of the mind are known, not only by ratio- 
cination, but also by the experience of every man that 
takes the pains to observe those motions within him- 
self." Therefore we may either take the " synthetical 
method," and from "the very first principles of philo- 
sophy " deduce u the causes and necessity of creating 
commonwealths " ; or, even without knowing geometry 
and physics, we may attain the principles of civil 
philosophy by the " analytical " method. The syn- 
thetical method proceeds from " motions of the mind " ; 
the knowledge of these motions, again, follows from 
knowledge of " sense or imagination," and ultimately 
depends upon geometry. But the analytical method 
starts from a knowledge of law as dependent upon 
" power " : of power as derived from the wills of the 
men " that constitute such power," and that again 
from a knowledge of men's appetites and passions. 
That knowledge is to be derived from every man's 



V 



ii.] THE WORLD 113 

experience if lie will but "examine his own mind." 
That is fortunate. If we had to deduce the nature of 
government and of right and wrong from geometry 
or physics, we should have to wait a long time 
for any satisfactory results. The materialist theory 
remains in Hobbes's mind as a self-evident truth, 
and has a very important influence upon his specula- 
tions. But his real method is different. That will 
appear hereafter. 



CHAPTEK III 

MAN 1 

1. Psychology 

Man is a body with, certain organs. Other bodies 
coming into contact with the organs of sense pro- 
pagate motions through the nerves to the brain and 
heart. The reactions or " endeavours w set up in the 
central organs generate the sensations or phantasms 
which constitute the whole mental world. We are 
directly conscious of nothing else, although they 
enable us to perceive what happens "outside of the 
mind." The laws of motion, again, tell us that a thing 
once in motion "will be eternally in motion unless 
somewhat else stay it." Whatever hindereth it will 

1 The second part of Hobbes's philosophy considered in this 
chapter is expounded in the early chapters of the Leviathan 
(vol. iii. of English works) and the Human Nature. The last, 
originally published in 1650, consists of the first thirteen 
chapters of the treatise written in 1640. The later part of the 
same treatise also appeared in 1650 as Be Corpore Politico. 
These two form the fourth volume of the English works. A 
later treatise, Be Homine, in Latin, appeared in 1658, but adds 
nothing to the earlier books. Hobbes never found himself 
able to give the fuller exposition which he had intended of 
the doctrines summarised in the Human Nature and the 
Leviathan; but he states the essence with sufficient terseness 
and clearness. 

114 



chap, in.] MAN 115 

take some time to destroy the motion. " Though the 
wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long 
time after ; so also it happeneth in that motion which 
is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he 
sees, dreams, etc." The " image " thus formed remains 
for a time after the object is removed, and the faculty 
of retaining such images is therefore called " the 
imagination." Imagination is therefore "nothing 
but decaying sense." All knowledge and thought 
thus correspond to the action and reaction between 
the living body and the bodies which impinge upon 
it. Knowledge, therefore, is entirely constructed from 
experience, or from the action set up from outside, 
although the organised body has the power of reacting 
and so generating the phantasms which compose the 
" imaginary " or mental world. The problem which 
Hobbes now considers is how the mind or brain comes 
to systematise this varying play of imagery and to 
acquire both general truths and rules which govern 
conduct. We have already seen what is the logic 
which is worked out by the help of language ; but we 
have also to consider man as an acting and feeling 
being. We must understand not only his methods of 
reasoning but the motives which govern his conduct. 
Although Hobbes holds that the phantasms are 
caused by the internal motions, this cause does not 
really help us much to explain the effect. We have to 
look at the phantasms themselves. Hobbes is naturally 
much interested by the phenomena of dreaming, for 
dreams are entirely made up of phantasms. We catch 
the phantasms, so to speak, by themselves, shifting, com- 
bining, and behaving according to their own purpose. 
Sleep is a "privation of the act of sense." The power 



116 HOBBES [chap. 

to feel remains, but its activity is suspended for the 
time. Consequently the phantasms are not suppressed 
or modified by the intrusion of images from without. 
They are made up entirely of past images, though 
combined in new and apparently arbitrary ways. 
Sometimes they continue the train of images of the 
waking state, but they also seem to spring up of 
themselves. The explanation is that there is a 
reciprocal action between the vital organs and the 
phantasms. " Sad imaginations nourish the spleen, 
and a strong spleen reciprocally causeth fearful 
dreams." When we are awake fear causes cold, and 
when we are asleep cold causes fear, and therefore 
" dreams of ghosts." This leads to an important 
result which will meet us again. Fear, " helped a 
little with stories of such apparitions, causes guilty 
men in the night and in hallowed places to see terrible 
phantasms which they mistake for real ghosts and 
incorporeal substances." Our dreams are thus the 
reverse of our waking imaginations : the motion when 
we are awake beginning at one end, and when we 
dream at the other. The absence of interfering sen- 
sations, again, makes the phantasms as clear as the 
waking impressions, and as they appear to be always 
present and we do not remember or reflect, strange 
things in dreams cause no wonder. Finally, the inco- 
herence of our dreams distinguishes them sufficiently 
from the phantasms which, when we are awake, inform 
us of a present reality. When dreaming we do not 
know that we are not awake, but when we are awake 
we are quite sure that we are not dreaming. " We do 
not dream of the absurdities of our waking thoughts," 
but when awake we perceive the incoherence of our 



in.] MAN 117 

dreams. In dreams "our thoughts appear like the 
stars between flying clouds, not in the order in which 
a man would choose to observe them, but as the 
uncertain order of flying clouds permits." 

What is it, then, that gives this colouring to our 
waking thoughts ? " jSTot every thought to every 
thought succeeds indifferently." Our images are 
relics of past sense impressions, and, moreover, they 
succeed in the same order in which their originals 
succeeded. One follows the other " as water upon 
a plane table is drawn which way any one part is 
guided by the finger." But we have experience of 
images succeeding in the most various orders. There 
is, therefore, no certainty as to what image will succeed 
another at a given time, although it is certain that 
the order is one in which we have previously experi- 
enced them. Thus thoughts seem "impertinent to 
one another " as in a dream. Yet even in this " wild 
ranging of the mind " we may often perceive the 
guiding cause. "For in a discourse of our present 
civil war what could seem more impertinent than to 
ask, as one did, what is the value of a Eotnan penny. 
Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For 
the thought of the war introduced the thought of the 
delivering up of the king to his enemies; the thought 
of that thought brought in the thought of the deliver- 
ing up of Christ; and that again the thought of the 
thirty pence, which was the price of that treason ; and 
thence easily followed that malicious question, and all 
this in a moment of time, for thought is quick." This 
passage, quoted by all critics of Hobbes, is a fine speci- 
men of his pregnant style. G. H. Lewes remarks that 
a popular rhetorician would have expanded the last 



118 HOBBES [chap. 

four words into a paragraph. A Scottish professor 
would have proceeded to quote Akenside. It is also 
remarkable as an illustration of the doctrine of the 
" association of ideas " which was to become so pro- 
minent with Hobbes's successors. It has been pointed 
out, indeed, that Hobbes was not the first person to 
notice a phenomenon which had already been observed 
by Aristotle. Nor has it with him the importance 
which it assumed in later years. Hume declared 
that the association of ideas was in mental phenomena 
what gravitation was in astronomy, and Hartley's later 
application of the doctrine to the moral as well as 
the intellectual nature, became the guiding principle 
of the later empirical school in England. Hartley's 
" vibratiuncles " play the same part as Hobbes's 
"endeavours/' and in both cases the physiological 
theory, which professes to give the ground of the 
phenomena, is rather deduced from the phenomena 
themselves than independently ascertained. The 
" association of ideas " remained when the vibrati- 
uncles were dropped. To Hartley's followers it 
seemed that the whole theory of knowledge depended 
upon a thorough carrying out of this principle. Logic 
in general seemed to them to be derivable from " asso- 
ciation of ideas." Though Hobbes certainly did not 
foresee this application of his statement, his use of the 
observation is important. The " trains of thoughts," 
as he says, are of two kinds : the first is " unguided " ; 
when thoughts are directed by association, and the 
succession appears to be as casual as in a dream: the 
second is " regulated by some desire or design." The 
unregulated give us the kind of knowledge which 
would be described by Hume as attributable to the 



V 



in.] MAN 119 

association of ideas. We remember things as ante- 
cedent and consequent, and this remembrance is an 
" experiment," whether made voluntarily, as when we 
put a thing in the fire to see what will happen, or 
" not made," as when we remember a fair morning 
after a cold evening. When we have often observed 
such a sequence we expect its repetition, and from 
this comes the kind of knowledge which we call 
" prudence." If the sign has preceded the event in a 
required number of cases, it may justify us in betting 
twenty to one that an event will happen, but never 
justifies a certainty, which belongs to science alone. 

At this stage, then, cause and effect are represented 
simply by sequence — the sole meaning, according to 
the later empiricists, of cause and effect. Now when a 
man desires some end, he thinks of the means which 
will produce it. This kind of thinking Hobbes takes 
to be common to man and beast, though it is man 
alone who is capable of following the reverse method 
of deducing effects from causes. That method is 
peculiar to truly scientific reasoning. The " discourse 
of the mind," when directed by design, may lead to 
either process. A man has lost something, and his 
mind runs back from place to place and time to time 
to find when and where he had it, for he knows the 
place in which he is to seek, and " his thoughts run 
over all the parts thereof in the same manner as one 
would sweep a room to find a jewel, or as a spaniel 
ranges a field till he find a scent, or as a man should run 
over the alphabet to start a rhyme." In other cases a 
man comes to know what event will follow an action. 
He wishes to know, for example, what will be the 
consequence of committing a crime. He assumes that 



^- ■-■■ 



120 HOBBES [chap. 

like events will follow like actions and so he thinks 
of the sequence of " the crime, the officer, the prison, 
the judge, and the gallows." That is a course of reflec- 
tion which, as Hobbes undeniably says, is likely to 
result in "prudence." Here again Hobbes emphasises 
a distinction between " prudence " and " science," or 
between merely empirical and necessary truth. He 
therefore introduces at this point his theory of names 
and " computation " — the method by which science is 
elaborated. But when he is taking the psychological 
rather than the logical view, and considering how as a 
matter of fact knowledge is developed, he makes the 
distinction less absolute. Science " after all " is a 
development of " prudence." 1 Both kinds of know- 
ledge, he says in the Human Nature, " are but experi- 
ence," though science depends upon the " proper use of 
names in language." This, however, implies the " con- 
comitance of conception with words : for if words 
alone were sufficient, a parrot might be taught as well 
to know truth as to speak it. Evidence is to truth, as 
the sap to the tree, which so far as it creepeth along 
with the body and branches keepeth them alive ; where 
it forsaketh them, they die ; for this evidence, which 
is meaning with our words, is the life of truth." So 
in the Leviathan he remarks that children before they 
can speak are not properly reasonable, and most men 
are little better. Having no science or knowledge of 
consequences, they still resemble children, who are 
made to believe that their new brothers and sisters 
are found in the garden. Such natural "prudence," 
indeed, is better than false rules. "The light of 

1 See chapter vi. of Human Nature, and chapter v. of 

Leviathan. 



in.] MAN 121 

human reason is perspicuous words, but by exact 
definitions first snuffed and purged from ambiguity. 
Reason is the pace; increase of science the way; and 
the benefit of mankind the end." The ability of the 
man who has natural dexterity with his weapon is to 
the ability of the man who has thoroughly acquired the 
art of fencing, as prudence to " sapience" (sapientia, 
that is, or science). "Both (abilities) are useful; but 
the latter infallible." Those, meanwhile, who trust to 
books and follow the blind blindly are "like him that, 
trusting to the false rules of a master of fence, 
ventures presumptuously upon an adversary that 
either kills or disgraces him." Thus in any business 
where we have no "infallible science," it is better to 
follow our "natural judgment than to be guided by 
general sentences read in authors." Politicians love 
to show their reading in councils, but very few do it 
in their domestic affairs : having prudence enough at 
home, though in " public they study more the reputa- 
tion of their own wit than the success of another's 
business." The accurate knowledge which comes with 
a " proper use of names " is therefore, as it would seem, 
not dependent upon "arbitrary conventions" as to 
names, but a refinement and articulate organisation of 
the simple conceptions out of which mere prudence or 
a system of empirical knowledge is constructed. 

Another point has now to be considered. Trains of 
thought are "regulated" by the presence of some aim 
or desire. The wild ranging of the mind represented 
by dreams or mere "association of ideas" is then 
directed to a single end. We have noticed sequences, 
such as the crime, the prison, the gallows; and when we 
desire, we think of the means which will produce the 



122 HOBBES [chap. 

desirable result, and then of the means to those means. 
What then is a desire ? All conceptions and appari- 
tions are really " motion in some internal substance of 
the head." The motion " not stopping there but pro- 
ceeding to the heart, of necessity must there either help 
or hinder the motion which is called vital: when it 
helpethit is called delight, contentment, or pleasure, which 
is nothing really but motion about the heart, as con- 
ception is nothing but motion in the head." When, on 
the contrary, the vital motion is hindered, the hindering 
motion is called pain. The physiology is of course 
absurd, but the theory thus accepted is remarkable. 
The same doctrine appears in Spinoza's Ethics, where 
it becomes the foundation of his famous account of 
the passions, held by many critics to be his master- 
piece. Sir F. Pollock in his admirable exposition 
observes that, according to Spinoza, " Pleasure marks 
the rising and pain the lowering of the vital energies." 
That phrase would serve equally as an equivalent 
for the words just quoted from Hobbes. Sir F. 
Pollock points out, again, that this doctrine has 
been accepted by Mr. Herbert Spencer and other 
modern thinkers. That pleasure and pain must in 
some way correspond to heighten or lower vitality is 
a doctrine which in some form or other becomes more 
essential with the acceptance of evolution. It is quite 
clear that while animals, human or other, seek for the 
pleasurable and avoid the painful, a being which acted 
upon the opposite plan would be in a very bad way. 
A race which hated food and took delight in being 
eaten would speedily be extinguished in the struggle 
for existence. Spinoza bases his theory upon his 
general principle — everything that is endeavours to 



in.] MAN 123 

persist in its own being " in suo esse perseverare co 
natur" Hobbes's acceptance of the law that the 
motion of a thing will persist unless altered by some 
other thing, implies a perception of the same principle. 
Meanwhile he insists (in the Human Nature) upon 
another point of great importance. 

" Ends," he says, may be near at hand or further off : 
those which are nearer are called " means " to the 
further. "But for an utmost end, in which the 
ancient philosophers have placed felicity, there is no 
such thing in this world, nor way to it, more than to 
Utopia : for while we live we have desires, and desire 
presupposeth a further end." There can, he infers, 
" be no contentment but in proceeding." We are not 
to marvel, therefore, when we see that as men attain 
to one end, "their appetite continually groweth" and 
they pursue some other. " Of those that have attained 
to the highest degree of honour and riches, some have 
affected mastery in some art ; as Nero in music and 
poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator ; " some 
kind of diversion, whether in play or business, is still 
required; and men justly com plain of a great grief 
that they know not what to do. " Felicity, therefore, 
by which we mean continual delight, consisteth not in 
having prospered but in prospering." This states a 
really valuable doctrine. Everything we have seen is 
motion : knowledge implies perpetual motion, the 
whole world-process is a continuous transformation of 
one system of motions into another ; and life, of 
course, is essentially motion. To wish, therefore, for 
" Utopia," which excludes change, is to wish for some- 
thing inconsistent with life and radically inconceivable. 
Hobbes constantly ridicules the scholastic doctrine of 



124 HOBBES [chap. 

eternity as a " nunc stans" a state which has no rela- 
tion to time. That is one of his favourite illustrations 
of the use of meaningless words. The universe is 
change. He answers by anticipation an argument 
which finds favour with modern pessimists. Life, they 
suggest, is essentially misery, because we are always 
desiring, and desire implies want. The inference 
involves a fallacy. Time never stands still, and we are 
always moving on. We cannot sit down upon a solid 
lump of pleasure outside of time and change. We 
cannot imagine such a thing, for the words have no 
real meaning. Every end is also a beginning, and to 
think of the future is to desire. But desire is not 
necessarily painful. It does not imply dissatisfaction 
with the present, but only a hope that the change 
may lead in a certain direction. If the conditions of 
future fruition appear to be present, the expectation 
of change is itself delightful. We have in Hobbes's 
language appetites and aversions. Appetite is an 
endeavour towards an " object which delighteth." 
" Pleasure, love, and appetite are divers names for 
divers considerations of the same things." Opposed 
to " appetite " is " aversion," which " moves us when 
the object displeaseth." Happiness implies, therefore, 
such a process as involves a continuous activity of the 
vital powers and not an impossible and inconceivable 
state of changelessness. We cannot arrest time or 
cease the change, but we may be continually moving 
along the line of greatest vigour and happiness. This 
again seems to be often overlooked by Hobbes's 
disciples, the later utilitarians. Bentham is apt to 
talk about " lots " of happiness, as if happiness were a 
solid thing capable of being accumulated like coins in 



in.] MAN 125 

a bag. Life is a continuous process in which pain or 
pleasure may predominate, but its value is to be 
measured, not by the sum of things possessed, but by 
the nature of the energy evolved in possessing them. 

This leads to Hobbes's theory of the passions, which, 
though characteristic, can hardly be described, like 
Spinoza's, as a " masterpiece." He has defined passion 
as "the motion about the heart," which is a consequence 
of " the motion of the brain," which we call conception. 
He has therefore " obliged himself to search out and 
declare from what conception proceedeth every one of 
the passions which are commonly taken notice of." 
The course of this inquiry is curious. He begins by 
a brief account of the sensual pains and pleasures. 
Among them are the pleasure of hearing. Galileo 
has done something towards explaining the pleasures 
of harmony; but "I confess that I know not," says 
Hobbes, " for what reason one succession in tone and 
measure is more pleasant than another." He con- 
jectures that some airs imitate and revive a former 
passion ; " for no air pleaseth but for a time, no more 
doth imitation." There is, however, " another delight 
by the ear," peculiar to musicians, namely, a " rejoicing 
of their own skill." Of this nature he says " are the 
passions of which I am to speak next." He is really 
dropping the attempt to give a scientific classification 
of the passions in order to dwell upon certain 
emotions interesting for the purpose of his political 
theories. 

He begins from a sufficiently wide proposition. 
The expectation that anything will happen hereafter 
implies the knowledge that there is something present 
which has power to produce it; that knowledge being 



{ I 



I 



/ 



c 



126 HOBBES [chap, 

derived from our remembrance of the past. " Where- 
fore all conception of the future is conception of power 
able to produce something. Whoever, therefore, ex- 
pecteth pleasure to come must conceive withal some 
power in himself by which the same may be attained." 
When we desire a pleasure, we no doubt conceive our- 
selves to have the power of enjoying it. We may 
perhaps desire something, while recognising that under 
the circumstances it is impossible, as according to the 
poet, the moth may desire the star. But desire as 
determining action, " the beginning of animal motion 
towards something that pleaseth us," supposes that we 
can enjoy and that we can act so as to procure the 
enjoyment or the chance of it. This, however, does 
not appear to throw much light upon the nature of 
desire or of the special passions. Hobbes proceeds to 
explain that by " power " he means all the faculties of 
body and mind, and, besides these, all such further 
power as is by them obtained, such as riches, authority, 
friendship, and good fortune. However little the 
general position can help us in " searching out " the 
nature of the various passions, it shows what really 
is in Hobbes' s mind. Since man is a desiring animal, 
and reaches one end only to anticipate further ends, 
he seeks not only to gratify some particular passion, 
but to obtain whatever may enable him to gain pleasure 
and avoid pain of all kinds. He has various capacities 
for enjoyment, and necessarily desires all the power 
which may enable him to go on enjoying as much as 
possible. " Favour," riches, and so forth, are means 
towards continuing a pleasant life. He adds a signifi- 
cant remark: "And because the power of one man 
resisteth and hindereth the effects of the power of 



in.] MAN 127 

another, power simply is no more but the excess of the 
power of one above that of another; for equal powers 
opposed destroy one another, and such opposition is 
called contention." It is clear that the meaning of 
"power" has become restricted. It no longer means 
anything which enables us to enjoy or to secure the 
means of enjoyment, but that kind of power which 
enables us to get a larger share than our neighbours. 
He is not thinking, for example, of the power of per- 
forming on the lute which gave him enjoyment when 
he was locked up in his bedroom, but of the power 
which enabled him to have a room to himself and keep 
out the burglars who might have knocked him on the 
head. Power is the ability of the individual to get as 
large a share as possible of the good things that may 
be going. 

He proceeds to give definitions of a great number 
of painful and pleasurable emotions. What we obtain 
from him, however, is not properly a general theory 
of the passions, but a not very systematic list of the 
various emotions as determined by the relations be- 
tween a man and the society in which he lives. Such 
as it is, however, his list suggests to him a number 
of characteristic and pungent sayings which have a 
bearing upon his political theory, and are often, it must 
be admitted, more forcible than edifying. The order 
of exposition, I may remark, is clearer in the Human 
Nature than in the Leviathan. 

Since all desire implies desire for "power," the 
recognition of the power belonging to ourselves or 
others is an essential element in our relations to each 
other. The "acknowledgment of power is called 
" Honour" and to honour a man is to conceive that he 



128 HOBBES [chap. 

has an "excess of power above him with whom he 
contendeth." All the signs of " power " are therefore 
honourable. Beauty of person or " general reputation 
among those of the other sex " is honourable as an 
indication of personal vigour. Actions which show 
strength of body, as victory in battle or duel, are 
honourable. Avoir tue son homme is an honour. So 
is a readiness to great exploits, for confidence gives 
a presumption of real power ; and to teach is honour- 
able as a sign of knowledge ; and riches as a sign of 
the power that acquired them ; and authority as a sign 
of the strength, wisdom, favour, or riches by which it 
is acquired. Good fortune is honourable because a 
sign of the favour of God, to whom is to be ascribed 
all that cometh to us by fortune, no less than that we 
attain unto by industry. Gravity is honourable when 
a sign of "a mind employed on something else," em- 
ployment being a sign of power. It is dishonourable 
when affected. For the gravity of the former kind 
is like a ship laden with merchandise, but of the latter 
like the steadiness of a ship ballasted with sand and 
other trash. Honour is the manifestation of the value 
we set on one another. The value or worth of a man 
is, as of all other things, his price : that is to say, 
as much as would be given for the use of his power ; 
and therefore this value is not absolute, but a thing 
dependent on the need and judgment of another. So a 
good soldier is more valuable in war than in peace, while 
the reverse is true of a learned and uncorrupt judge. 
As . in other things, so in men, not the seller but the 
buyer determines the price. For, let men, as most 
men do, rate themselves at the highest value they can, 
yet their true value is no more than it is esteemed 



in.] MAN 129 

by others. Moreover, honour consisteth only in the 
opinion of " power." If an action be great and difficult 
and therefore a proof of great power, it matters not 
whether it be just or unjust. The ancients thought 
they were honouring their gods by ascribing to them 
great though unjust acts; as in the Homeric hymn, 
Mercury's greatest praise is that " being born in the 
morning, he had invented music at noon, and before 
night stolen away the cattle of Apollo." Piracy was 
thought honourable by the Greeks, and at the present 
time " private duels are and always will be honour- 
able, though unlawful, till such time as there shall be 
honour ordained for them that refuse, and ignominy 
for them that make the challenge." Duels often show 
courage, and therefore " strength and skill, which are 
power," though for the most part, he admits, they are 
the effects of rash speech and the " fear of dishonour." 
Hobbes was the last man to insist that duelling should 
be honoured ; but that it was honoured is indisputable, 
and he is simply considering the fact. 

The desire for power implies the desire for honour : 
the recognition of power by ourselves or others, for 
that is itself power. We have next to notice the 
passions which correspond to honour. The first is 
" glory or internal gloriation or triumph of the mind." 
This means the conception of our own power as com- 
pared with the power of " him that contendeth against 
us." " By those whom it displeaseth this passion is 
called pride ; by those whom it pleaseth it is called a 
just valuation of oneself." When the " imagination of 
our power " arises from experience of our own actions, 
it is just and well-grounded, and prompts aspiring to 
higher degrees of power. When it arises from the 



130 HOBBES [chap. 

trusting other people's opinions, it becomes "false 
glory/' and leads to mistaken ambition. Sometimes 
glory depends upon fiction, as when we imagine our- 
selves to be the hero of some romance. This begets 
no aspiration, and is " vain glory " when, " like the 
fly on the axletree, a man exclaims, ( What a dust do 
I raise.' " He illustrates it elsewhere from the gallant 
madness of Don Quixote, " which is nothing else but 
an expression of such height of vain glory as reading 
of romance may produce on pusillanimous men." It 
is shown by " affectation of fashions," and "usurping 
the signs of virtues " not really possessed. The oppo- 
site passion to glory is called " humility " by those by 
whom it is approved, and by others " dejection." " If 
well-grounded, it produceth fear to attempt anything 
rashly ; if ill, it utterly cows a man, that he neither 
dares speak publicly nor expect success in any 
action." 

Another passion of which Hobbes takes himself to 
have given the first explanation is marked by that 
" distortion of the countenance which we call laughter." 
The cause of laughter is not wit, " for men laugh at 
mischances and indecencies wherein there lieth no 
wit nor jest at all." What moves laughter must be 
something "new and unexpected." Men, especially 
if " greedy of applause," laugh at unexpected success 
in their actions and at their own jests. They laugh 
again at jests which elegantly discover the absurdity 
of another man. They do not laugh when they them- 
selves or their friends are the objects of jesting. 
Laughter, then, is caused by " sudden glory " : the 
discovery of some superiority in ourselves to other 
people. The popularity of this phrase shows, I fancy, 



in.] MAN 131 

that Hobbes has more or less hit the mark. 1 It is 
only fair to add his remark that the passion " is 
incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest 
abilities in themselves ; who are forced to keep them- 
selves in their own favour by observing the imper- 
fections of other men. And therefore much laughter 
at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity. 
For of great minds one of the proper works is to 
help and free others from scorn, and compare them- 
selves only with the most able." We should only 
laugh "when all the company may laugh together," 
as "at absurdities abstracted from persons." That 
is a fair test of the innocence of laughter, with which 
Chesterfield might agree. 

The attempt to analyse the passions into some form 
of the desire for power or honour has less edifying 
consequences. Hobbes, we discover, is the most 
thoroughgoing of egoists, and not only admits the 
universality of self-love, but speaks as though this 
were one of the obvious truths which require no 
proof or explanation. " Pity," he observes with super- 
lative calmness, is imagination or fiction of future 
calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of 
another man's calamity. We pity those who suffer 
an undeserved calamity, " because then there appeareth 
more probability that the same may happen to us : 
for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man 
may happen to every man." That is why men pity 
those whom they love ; for whom they love they think 
worthy of good and therefore not worthy of calamity. 
This may suggest the question, " What is the meaning 

1 It is discussed by Professor Sully in his recent book upon 
humour. 



132 HOBBES [chap. 

of love ? " He discusses this in the Human Nature, 
though he apparently does not think it worthy of con- 
sideration in the Leviathan. Love in the most general 
sense means simply the " delight " caused by an object 
which helps the vital motion, hatred having the corre- 
sponding relation to pain. This, he says, sufficiently 
explains the love which men have to one another, or 
the pleasure which they take in each other's company, 
which entitles them to be called " sociable." To love 
men means that we think of them as useful. Of love 
in the narrower sense, or the passion which is " the 
great theme of poets," he observes that, in spite of 
their " praises," it means the lover's " need," not any 
special quality in the object beloved. " Those are 
most successful in love who care least, which not per- 
ceiving many men cast away their services as one arrow 
after another till, in the end, together with their hopes 
they lose their wits." Hobbes is not very clear at this 
point — perhaps he was a little shy of " the poets " — 
but he does not appear to take a romantic view of the 
question. Another variety of love is more properly 
called " good will or charity." This is a modification, 
again, of the desire for power. Nothing can convince 
a man of his own power more completely than the 
discovery that he is able not only to accomplish his 
own desires but also to assist other men in theirs. 
This is the secret of " the natural affection of parents to 
their children (which the Greeks call vropyrj)" as also 
of the affection implied in " assisting those who adhere 
to us." When, however, men bestow benefits upon 
strangers, they do not act from charity ; but either 
seek to " purchase friendship" by contract, or seek 
peace from fear. We act for the good of others, it 



in.] MAN 133 

seems, either from the complacency derived from 
the evidence of our own power, which is properly 
" charity/' or in order to buy their services. Hobbes 
speaks as if his view were not only obvious, but 
edifying — as though he were simply elaborating St. 
Paul's famous description of the Christian virtue of 
charity. 

Another passion is more intelligible to him. Since 
u knowledge is power/' we naturally desire to extend 
our knowledge. The corresponding passion is called 
" admiration/' and the " appetite " is " curiosity." Its 
existence, like the faculty of language, marks the point 
at which we part company from beasts. The beast 
flies from or approaches a new object, only considering 
whether it will " serve his turn." The man endeavours 
to discover the cause. Hence arises all philosophy, 
which is, as we know, the theory of consequences in 
general. A man in chase of riches or power (" which 
in respect of knowledge are but sensuality ") does not 
care about the motions of the stars : it is only a few, 
as he remarks elsewhere, who appreciate science, " for 
science is of that nature as none can understand it to 
be, except such as in a good measure have attained 
unto it." The military arts are of obvious utility and 
their possessors are powerful. " Though the true 
mother of them be science, namely the mathematics ; 
yet because they are brought into light by the hand of 
the artificer, they be esteemed (the mid-wife passing 
with the vulgar for the mother) as his issue." Hobbes 
can preach with feeling on the superiority of philo- 
sophical inquiry to the mere bread-winning studies. 
Meanwhile "curiosity is delight; therefore also 
novelty is so ; but especially that novelty from which 



134 HOBBES [chap. 

a man conceiveth an opinion true or false of bettering 
his estate ; for in such case they stand affected with 
the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are 
shuffling." That no doubt expresses a very genuine 
sentiment. Though science is power, he would say, 
the man of science has very little honour, unless he 
can apply his science to generally intelligible ends. 
" Curiosity " and reason distinguish man from beasts ; 
" which makes me, when I hear a man upon the dis- 
covery of any new and ingenious knowledge or inven- 
tion ask gravely, that is to say scornfully, what 'tis 
good for ', meaning what money it will bring in, to 
esteem that man not sufficiently removed from 
brutality." Love of philosophic truth, one is glad to 
observe, appears to Hobbes to be admirable for itself, 
though perhaps at some cost of consistency. 

The curious argument which follows is of some 
interest. What, he asks, is the cause of the great 
difference between men's capacities ? It cannot be a 
difference in the " natural temper of the brain," for, if 
so, the difference would show itself " in the senses " ; 
whereas wise men and foolish have (as he assumes) 
equal senses. Imagination being "decaying sense," 
the imagination ought to be equal. The difference is 
therefore owing to the differences in the constitution 
" of the body." What helps the " vital constitution " 
in one man, and is therefore pleasurable, hinders it in 
another, and is therefore painful. He discusses the 
" intellectual virtues " — meaning, the qualities which 
are desired " for eminence " and are gauged by " com- 
parison " ; for " if all things were equal in all men, 
nothing would be prized." The great difference 
between men's wits is due to a difference in " quick- 



in.] MAN 135 

ness," or "swift succession of one thought to 
another/' and in " steadiness of direction to some 
approved end." A defect of quickness is " dullness or 
stupidity " ; and the difference is due to the difference 
of the passions. Desire for power, riches, knowledge, 
or honour (the last three being modifications of the 
first) is thus the great cause of the " difference of wit." 
A man who has no great passion for any of these things 
may be good in the sense of inoffensive ; " yet he can- 
not possibly have either a great fancy or much judg- 
ment. For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts 
and spies, to range abroad and find the way to the 
things desired — all steadiness of the mind's motion and 
all quickness of the same proceeding from thence ; for 
as to have no desire is to be dead, so to have weak 
passions is dullness ; and to have passions indifferently 
for everything is giddiness and distraction " ; while 
abnormal vehemence of passion is madness. That 
intellectual excellence is dependent upon the character 
and the strength of the emotions is a doctrine upon 
which Hobbes rightly and impressively insists. Fancy, 
according to him, means quickness in perceiving " simili- 
tudes," and judgment or " discretion" quickness in per- 
ceiving " dissimilitudes." Fancy must be "eminent" 
in poetry, though judgment is required; while in his- 
tory fancy is wanted only to " adorn the style." In 
demonstration, "judgment does all," except that "an 
apt similitude " may be required to open the under- 
standing. " Discretion " is required in poetry ; an " an- 
atomist or physician " may speak of " unclean things " ; 
" but for another man to write his extravagant or 
pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man from being 
tumbled in the dirt should come and present himself 



136 HOBBES [chap. 

before good company." This is a doctrine for which 
Hobbes might have found plenty of contemporary 
and other illustrations. An excessive "mobility of 
mind," again, maketh men depart "from their dis- 
course by a parenthesis, and from that parenthesis by 
another, till at length they either lose themselves, or 
make their narration like a dream or some studied 
nonsense." He would not have enjoyed Sordetto. 
" Madness " is a general name for " all passions that 
produce strange and unusual behaviour." It is espe- 
cially conspicuous in a multitude, he says, answering by 
anticipation a famous query of Bishop Butler. " For 
what argument of madness can there be greater than to 
clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends ? 
Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. 
For they will clamour, fight against and destroy those 
by whom all their lifetime before they have been pro- 
tected and secured from injury. And if this be mad- 
ness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular 
man." Each particle of water "contributes as much 
to the roaring of the sea" as any other drop, and the 
same is true of the "seditious roaring of a troubled 
nation." 

Such remarks, though characteristic, are more or 
less digressions from the main purpose, to which he 
returns in a chapter upon " the difference of manners " 
in the Leviathan, By manners, he tells us, he does not 
mean " points of the small morals " — social etiquette — 
but the qualities of mankind that concern their living 
together in "peace and unity." In other words, he 
will ask how the passions of the individual bear upon 
the political order. Since felicity, as we have seen, 
"is a continual progress of the desire from one object 



_ . - 



in.] MAN 137 

to the other," all men desire both to procure and 
assure a contented life. Unluckily they differ as to 
the way, from the diversity of passions or difference 
in knowledge. In the first place, therefore, he will 
" put for a general inclination of all mankind, a per- 
petual and restless desire of power after power, that 
endeth only in death." It is not that a man can 
always hope for a greater delight, but because he can- 
not be assured of " the means to live which he hath 
at present without the acquisition of more." " Com- 
petition of riches, honour, command, or other power 
inclineth to contention, enmity, and war ; because the 
way of one competitor to the attaining of his desire is 
to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other." Par- 
ticularly " competition of praise (as he rather oddly 
adds) inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men 
contend with the living, not with the dead ; to these 
ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the 
glory of the other." Desire of " ease " disposeth men 
to obedience, and so does desire of knowledge and the 
arts of peace, for such desire " containeth a desire of 
leisure." Desire of fame " disposeth to laudable actions," 
even of "fame after death." For though after death 
we have no sense of praise on earth, men have a 
present delight therein from foresight of it, and of 
the benefit to their posterity ; which though they see 
not, yet they "imagine," and everything that is a 
pleasure to the sense, the same also is pleasure in the 
imagination. Receiving benefits from an equal " dis- 
poseth to counterfeit love, but really secret hatred; 
and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor 
that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly 
wishes him there where he might never see him more. 



138 HOBBES [chap. 

For benefits oblige, and obligation is thraldom; and 
an unrequitable obligation perpetual thraldom, which 
is to one's equal hateful." Obligation to a recognised 
superior, however, "inclines to love," for it can be 
requited by gratitude, and so long as there is a hope 
of requital, we are disposed to love even an equal 
or inferior benefactor ; the obligation is then mutual ; 
" from whence proceedeth an emulation of who shall 
exceed in benefiting; the most noble and profitable 
contention possible; wherein the victor is pleased 
with his victory, and the other revenged by confessing 
it." Ignorance " disposeth men to take on trust not 
only the truth they know not, but also the errors and, 
which is more, the nonsense of them they trust." 
Ignorance of the nature of right, in particular, " dis- 
poseth a man to think that unjust which it hath been 
the custom to punish, and that just, of the impunity 
and approbation whereof they can produce an example 
or, as the lawyers, which only use this false measure of 
justice, barbarously call it a precedent." Such men " set 
themselves against reason as often as reason is against 
them ; which is the cause that the doctrine of right 
and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the pen 
and the sword; whereas the doctrine of lines and 
figures is not so." Truth in geometry "crosses no 
man's ambition, profit, or lust." "For I doubt not but 
if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of 
dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, 
that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two 
angles of a square, that doctrine should have been, if not 
disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry 
suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was 
able." 



V 



in.] MAN 139 

The quaint passage in the Human Nature which 
concludes this account of the passions sums up his 
view. Life, he says, may be compared to a race — 
a race which has no other " goal " or " garland " than 
"being foremost." "In it to endeavour is appetite; to 
be remiss is sensuality: to consider them behind is 
glory : to consider them before is humility : ... to fall 
on the sudden is disposition to weep : to see another 
fall is disposition to laugh : to see one outgone whom 
we would not is pity: to see one outgo whom we 
would not is indignation : to hold fast by another is 
love: to carry him on that so holdeth is charity: to 
hurt oneself for haste is shame : . . . continually to be 
outgone is misery : continually to outgo the next before 
is felicity : and to forsake the course is to die." 

Life, we see, is essentially competition, though as 
yet the struggle for existence is regarded as only 
affecting the individual. Hobbes, it will probably 
appear to most people, takes a sufficiently cynical view 
of human nature. He has been compared to Roche- 
foucauld, though he does not represent the epigram- 
matic skill which is gained in highly polished society. 
He has frequented Mersenne's "cell," not the courtier's 
salon. His opinions might be compared to the so-called 
Machiavellianism of Bacon's essays — the concentration 
of the experience of the statesman and lawyer, who 
wishes to see things as they are and to get rid of 
humbug and conventional gloss. Hobbes, however, 
has a more distinctly scientific aim, and wishes at least 
to connect his remarks with psychological theory. He 
would defend himself against the charge that he is tak- 
ing an "unworthy" view of mankind by appealing to 
plain facts. Men, he would say, are stupid and selfish. 



140 HOBBES [chap. 

That, no doubt, is not the way to be popular. The 
" idealist " often takes a more painful view of men as 
they are, than the poor " cynic " ; but he atones for it 
by an enthusiastic view of what they may become, and 
his readers catch the contagion of his enthusiasm. 
Their perception of the general corruption convinces 
them that they at any rate are of the salt of the earth, 
and this is comforting. If Hobbes's cynicism meant 
simply that he recognised the great part played by 
dullness and selfishness in human affairs, and the 
futility of overlooking that fact in political theories, 
we might say that he was applying a wholesome 
corrective to extravagant belief in millenniums. 

It must be granted, however, that he goes beyond 
this. His quiet resolution of all the virtues into forms 
of egoism was of course condemned by the respectable: 
In our eyes it may be redeemed by the charming 
simplicity and utter unconsciousness of offence with 
which he propounds his atrocious theories. He be- 
comes unintentionally humorous. We must, how- 
ever, notice the nature of the reasoning which leads 
him to such conclusions. That is implied by one 
characteristic doctrine. Every man, he says, calls that 
which pleaseth him good, and that which displeaseth 
him evil. Since men differ in " constitution," they 
differ as to what is good and what is evil. There is 
no such thing as " absolute goodness considered with- 
out relation." Even God's goodness means his good- 
ness to us. The words "good" and " evil," he says 
elsewhere, " are ever used with reference to us." No 
" common rule " can be taken " from the nature of the 
objects themselves." Such_a rule must be made by 
the man himself, or by the " commonwealth," or by 



in.] MAN 141 

some arbitrator set up by consent. It is indeed quite 
clear that from Hobbes's point of view the abstract 
words " good " and " evil " could have no meaning. 
As " man " only means John and Thomas and Peter, 
" good " only means what John and Thomas and Peter 
like, and " evil " what they dislike. Moreover, if 
psychological and ethical theories are to be based upon 
experience, we must begin by studying the likings and 
dislikings of human beings. Science must start from 
the actual, not from the ideal. A scientific theory of 
human nature begins from the question, what passions 
do in fact govern, not from the question what passions 
ought to govern, human beings. Now in fact men 
have various passions and desires which lead them to 
break as well as to obey rules of morality. In a 
dozen men we may find a Judas Iscariot as well as a 
St. John ; and we have to account equally for both. 
As a physiologist has to deal with the morbid as well 
as the healthy, so the psychologist has to deal with 
the traitor as well as the saint, and with all the com- 
plex play of good and bad impulses, which make saints 
and criminals and men of every intervening shade. 
He will of course admit that, as a fact, a certain moral 
code comes into existence, conformity to which is 
regarded with approval by the average man. How it 
comes to be formed, and what is the nature of its 
authority, are questions to wliich Hobbes addresses 
himself in the political treatises, and of which he offers 
a very remarkable solution. 

Hobbes can only say at present, that since each 
man is governed by his own passions and desires, 
the formation of the "common rule" supposes some 
" arbitrator " or central authority. His uncompro- 



142 HOBBES [chap. 

mising egoism is an inevitable consequence of his 
position. It is assumed by the moralists whom he 
attacked that there is some ultimate and absolute 
good: an ideal law revealed through reason and 
equally binding upon all men. It determines con- 
duct, since the will always chooses the "apparent 
good." Season is itself virtue, and vice means igno- 
rance, for it is only from a mistaken view of what is 
really good that men fail to do right. Hobbes might 
agree with the doctrine that man always chooses the 
apparent good ; but he denies that the really good is 
knowable. The doctrine therefore means for him 
that each man will do what is pleasant to himself. 
He is governed exclusively by his own desires, and it 
would be as absurd to speak of a man acting from 
another man's motives as to speak of his body being 
nourished by another man's food. ISTow it must be 
observed that later thinkers, who profess equally to 
base ethical theories entirely upon experience, will not 
admit this conclusion. They hold that sympathy is a 
genuine and ultimate emotion; and that man can so 
identify himself with the society of which he forms a 
part, that public spirit or patriotism or philanthropy 
or family affection may be as genuine a motive as the 
animal appetites. They hold, and, as I think, rightly, 
that an empirical theory of morality does not really 
involve the acceptance of a selfish or egoistic doctrine. 
But it is undeniable that this interpretation is plausible. 
The utilitarians could argue with great force that a 
tendency to produce the " greatest happiness of the 
greatest number " gives the true criterion of morality. 
But as an historical fact, they found their greatest 
difficulty in reconciling this with their other assump- 



in.] MAN 143 

tion, that each man seeks his own happiness. They 
tried to explain " altruism " by " association/ 7 at the 
risk of making it a kind of desirable fallacy, or else 
they tried to show — what unfortunately cannot be 
shown — that self-sacrifice is always repaid, or, in other 
words, is a sham sacrifice. 

Hobbes had not to bother himself about such con- 
ciliation. He was perfectly content to profess the 
most unblushing egoism and carry it out consistently. 
His essential aim was to be scientific, to accept the 
obvious facts, and to carry out the conclusions logi- 
cally. His nominalism naturally went with individual- 
ism. Each man obviously is a separate thing which 
must be explained by its own properties, and not by 
reference to any mysterious bond of unity with other 
things. Unfortunately there is selfishness enough in 
the world to give much plausibility to some of his 
statements, and to admit of their being often approxi- 
mately true. Finally, his thorough materialism seems 
to make the assumption of selfishness inevitable. If, 
indeed, it be possible to regard man as a mere mechan- 
ism, worked by the laws of motion, and yet to regard 
him as a self-conscious, reasoning, and remembering 
animal, it may also be possible to regard him as 
sympathetic and unselfish. Still it is difficult to see 
how the actions of a mere automaton affected only by 
the pressure of bodies in contact with him, can be 
really determined by the conditions of other automata. 
He may be so constituted as to preserve his own 
equilibrium ; but his relation to his like w r onld seem 
to be limited to the cases in which two automata knock 
their heads together. Hobbes, however, had no diffi- 
culty in altogether denying the existence of sympathy. 



144 HOBBES [chap. 

The desire for self-preservation was quite enough to 
provide the working force for his scheme ; and he 
propounds his theory with the straightforward blunt- 
ness which has the charm of obvious sincerity. 



2. Theology 

We are now pretty well prepared to proceed to the 
third part of Hobbes's philosophy ; but there are two 
other applications of his first principles which have a 
bearing upon his political doctrine, and which also 
deserve consideration for themselves. We have seen 
what Hobbes thought of bodies ; we may ask what was 
his creed as to the creator of bodies and the relation 
of the creator to man ? His arguments upon theology 
and upon the problem of free-will excited the keenest 
antagonism among his contemporaries. His position 
in both cases is remarkable, if only as illustrating the 
stir which he gave to thought in general. Whether 
his teaching was right or wrong, or a little of both, it 
at least caused his opponents to look into the founda- 
tions of their own creed. 

Hobbes steadily denied that the name "atheist" 
properly applied to him. He calls himself not only a 
theist, but a Christian, and even a faithful member of 
the Church of England. Some of his critics accept 
his assurances so far as to hold that he only meant to 
reject scholastic dogmas or "incrustations," and did 
not get beyond what is vaguely called Socinianism, or, 
perhaps, " unsectarian Christianity." In such discus- 
sions two distinct questions are apt to be confounded. 
The question, that is, what a man really believed, is 
identified with the question what were the logical conse- 



in.] MAN 146 

quences of his belief. It is undeniable that a man often 
rejects, and sometimes rejects with horror, doctrines 
which to others seem to be inevitable inferences from 
the first principles which he explicitly affirms. It is 
therefore " unf air/' we are told, to attribute to a man 
the beliefs which, to our minds, he was logically bound 
to hold. It is certainly unfair so far as it is false. If a 
man repudiates a doctrine, the repudiation should be 
noted, even though we may think that he is under a 
delusion, which amounts to a concealment of his own 
opinions from himself under a jugglery of words. 
Sometimes, indeed, we are only " unfair " in the sense 
that we are paying him too high a compliment by 
supposing that he saw the full bearing of his argu- 
ments. It is no doubt unfair again to impute opinions 
which a man disavows, when they are opinions which 
will incur odium, or perhaps involve a probability of 
being burnt. If the bishops, of whom Hobbes was 
afraid, had refused to take notice of his repudiation of 
atheism, they would certainly have been unjust. We 
have not now, however, to consider whether Hobbes 
deserved either burning or damnation. The devoutest 
of bishops would not have the least wish to burn 
him at the present day, and we generally admit that 
opinions, honestly entertained for their supposed reason- 
ableness, do not justify moral reprobation. Our duty 
to Hobbes personally is simply the duty of ascertain- 
ing what, as a fact, he did think, or thought that he 
thought. It is of some importance to know what he 
thought if we wish to estimate his character for 
honesty and courage. But for us the more important 
question is what were the true logical bearings of his 
position, whether he perceived them or not. Those 



146 HOBBES [chap. 

were what really affected the thought of his time. 
When you have once started an argument, you cannot 
tell what effect it will have upon others. You are 
firing a charge of dynamite, and the explosion will act 
irrespectively of the man who set it going. The first 
and most important question is what " Hobbism " 
means, whether Hobbes meant it or not. When we 
know that, we can draw such inferences as seem 
reasonable as to his personal character. 

In his Objections to Descartes, Hobbes indicates 
very plainly his position in regard to theology. He 
criticises Descartes's famous argument that the " idea " 
of God as a perfect being necessarily implies also 
God's existence. Hobbes replies summarily that we 
have no " idea " of God. An idea according to him is, 
as we have seen, nothing but " decaying sense." It is 
a fading picture of some object previously perceived 
by the hands, eyes, or ears. Now nobody, of course, 
could ever have supposed that " God " could be per- 
ceived in that way. Descartes answers that by 
" idea " he means something entirely different from 
Hobbes's " idea." What he meant need not be inquired, 
and Hobbes did not take the trouble to inquire. He 
takes it for granted that all knowledge of facts comes 
to us through the senses, and that the a priori method 
without appeal to experiences must be sterile. That 
is to him too obvious to need proof. If so, it would 
seem that demonstrations of the existence of God are 
impossible. " Knowable " means visible or tangible, 
avid God is admittedly neither. Hobbes, however, 
does not admit this conclusion. After discussing 
man's knowledge and passions as related to " natural 
things," he assumes that we also give names to (that 



in.] MAN 147 

is, reason about) " things supernatural/' that is God 
and spirits. Such names ought to correspond to some 
reality, and their meaning will explain in what sense 
we use the phrases ascribing certain attributes to the 
beings named. The belief in things supernatural is 
produced by "curiosity," that is, as he explains, "love 
of the knowledge of causes." This leads a man to ask 
the cause of an effect ; " and, again, the cause of that 
cause ; till of necessity he must come to this thought 
at last that there is some cause, whereof there is no 
former cause, but is eternal ; which is it men call God; 
so that it is impossible to make any profound inquiry 
into natural causes, without being inclined thereby to 
believe there is one God eternal." God is the first 
" power of all powers, and first cause of all causes." 
The name implies " eternity, incomprehensibility, and 
omnipotency." Incomprehensibility is explained by 
an analogy. A man born blind, when he warms him- 
self by the fire, may convince himself that there is 
something there which is called fire by his companions, 
and which is the cause of the heat which he feels. 
But he cannot have any such " idea " of it as those 
have that see it. " So also by the visible things in 
this world, and their admirable order, a man may 
conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, 
and yet not have an idea or image of him in his mind." 
The attributes of this Being must also be inconceiv- 
able. We speak of God as " seeing, hearing, speaking, 
knowing, loving, and the like," names which have a 
meaning as applied to men, but mean " nothing in the 
nature of God." It is " well reasoned, shall not the 
God that made the eye see, and the ear hear ? " But 
it is also well reasoned " if we say, shall God which 



148 HOBBES [chap. 

made the eye, not see without the eye; or that made 
the ear, nor hear without the ear ; or that made the 
brain, not know without the brain ; or that made the 
heart, not love without the heart." The attributes of 
God signify " our incapacity " or " our reverence " : 
our "incapacity when we say incomprehensible and 
infinite; our reverence when we give him those names 
which amongst us are the names of those things w r e 
most magnify and commend, as omnipotent, omni- 
scient, just, merciful, etc." 

This may remind us of many controversies in which 
some orthodox divines have agreed with Hobbes. It 
recalls, for example, the agnosticism which Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer professes himself to have expanded from 
Sir William Hamilton ; while Mansel used the same 
doctrine in defence of orthodox creeds. So far 
Hobbes might have agreed with Mansel rather than 
with Mr. Spencer, and might have believed his creed 
to be susceptible of an interpretation reconcilable 
with orthodoxy. His position, however, depends 
upon his theory of causation. Although he speaks 
of the " admirable order " of the world, he emphati- 
cally rejects the doctrine of final causes. We are not 
to infer from the eye or the ear any likeness between 
the Creator and his creature ; but only some inscruta- 
ble cause. And if we take into account what Hobbes 
meant by cause we come to a difficulty. The whole 
" world-process," according to him, is simply a series 
of changes in motion : when we inquire into the cause 
of any event we are really asking what was the pre- 
vious state of things from which the succeeding was 
developed by a continuous series of change accord- 
ing to purely mechanical laws. The "cause" of the 



in.] MAN 149 

present arrangement of the stars is simply their pre- 
ceding arrangement. The argument, therefore, for a 
first cause means, on his interpretation, that we can- 
not continue this inquiry indefinitely. Instead of 
saying "this state implies a preceding state/' we 
must say " this state implies that it was put together 
supernaturally." 

Now in the De Corpore he criticises this argument 
himself. A man will be " wearied/' he says, in tracing 
back the series of cause and effect, and " give over " 
inquiry. " But whether we suppose the world to be 
finite or infinite, no absurdity will follow." "As it is 
true that nothing is moved by itself, so it is true also 
that nothing is moved but by that which was already 
moved." That implies an indefinite regress. "I can- 
not therefore commend/' he says, "those that boast 
they have demonstrated by reasons drawn from natural 
things that the world had a beginning. They are con- 
temned by idiots because they understand them not ; 
and by the learned, because they understand them ; 
by both deservedly." " They are entangled/' he says, 
" in the words infinite and eternal, of which we have 
in our mind no idea but that of our own insufficiency to 
comprehend them," and thus they are forced " either 
to speak something absurd, or, which they love worse, 
to hold their peace." Infinite, in short, means simply 
indefinitely great. Hobbes, therefore, will be content 
" with that doctrine concerning the beginning and 
magnitude of the world which I have been persuaded 
to by the Holy Scriptures, and fame of the miracles 
which confirm them ; and by the custom of my coun- 
try and reverence due to the laws." 

These may be excellent, but are scarcely phih> 



150 HOBBES [chap. 

sophical reasons. Bramhall, when he accused Hobbes 
of atheism, refers to this passage. Hobbes, he says, 
denies that there is any " argument to prove a Deity/' 
except the creation of the world, and that the question 
whether the world had a beginning must be settled 
" not by argument, but by the magistrate's authority." 
Hobbes replies that it may be settled " by the Scrip- 
tures." " As far as arguments from natural reason," 
he adds, "neither you nor any other have hitherto 
brought any, except the creation, that has not made 
it more doubtful to many men than it was before." 
He then repeats the passage just quoted from the 
De Corpore, and adds : — " This, doctor, is not ill said, 
and yet it is all you ground your slander on, which 
you make to sneak vilely under a crooked para- 
phrase." "These opinions (about the beginning of 
the world, apparently) are to be judged by those to 
whom God has committed the ordering of religion; 
that is, to the supreme governors of the Church ; that 
is, in England, to the king." Charles II. apparently 
was to decide whether the world had a beginning. 

Putting aside for the moment this quaint transi- 
tion from reason to the British Constitution, it is to 
be noticed that Hobbes had expressed himself unequi- 
vocally in the De Give and the Leviathan. By God, he 
says, is understood the cause of the world. " To say 
the world is God, is to say there is no cause of it, that 
is, no God. ... To say the world was not created but 
eternal, seeing that which is eternal has no cause, is 
to deny there is a God." It is plain then that if we 
may put these statements together, Hobbes declares 
that the only proof of God's existence is the creation 
of the world, and that we cannot possibly know 



in.] MAN 151 

whether the world was or was not created. In any 
case, as we have seen, Hobbes always asserts most 
emphatically that we really know nothing of God's 
attributes, except his existence. Other attributes are 
negative or metaphorical or signs of " honour." We 
know nothing of God's "natural kingdom" except 
"from the principles of natural science, which are so 
far from teaching us anything of God's nature, as they 
cannot teach us our own nature nor the nature of the 
smallest creature living. And therefore when men 
out of the principles of natural reason dispute of the 
attributes of God, they but dishonour him ; for in the 
attributes which we give to God we are not to consider 
the signification of philosophical truth, but the signifi- 
cation of pious intention to do him the greatest honour 
we are able." Existence indeed implies something 
more. Hobbes, as we have seen, denies that spirits are 
" incorporeal " ; to say that a spirit is an " incorporeal 
substance" is to say that there is no spirit at all. 
Bramhall says that the same would apply to God. 
Hobbes replies that the true question is " whether 
God be a phantasm (id est an idol of the fancy, which 
St. Paul saith is nothing) or a corporeal spirit, that is 
to say, something that has magnitude." He therefore 
holds that God is a "most pure, simple, invisible, 
spirit corporeal." He illustrates this by a strange 
analogy. He has seen " two waters, one of the river, 
the other a mineral water, so like that no man could 
discern the one from the other," and yet when mixed, 
the whole was indistinguishable in appearance from 
milk. "If then such gross bodies have so great 
activity, what shall we think of spirits, whose kinds 
be as many as there be kinds of liquor, and activity 



152 HOBBES [chap. 

greater?" (How does he know that?) "Can it 
then be doubted that God, who is an infinitely fine 
spirit and withal intelligent, can make and change 
all kinds of bodies as he pleaseth ? " God, then, 
like other spirits, is corporeal, though he may be 
called " incorporeal " to imply that he is " something 
between infinitely subtile and nothing: less subtile 
than infinitely subtile, and yet more snbtile than a 
thought." It would be superfluous to examine this 
singular hypothesis to which Hobbes is driven by his 
desire to reconcile his materialism with his theology. 
It is enough to remark that his system would clearly 
be more consistent and intelligible if he simply omitted 
the theology altogether. 

Meanwhile Hobbes has another doctrine about 
theology which is of more interest and more in accord- 
ance with his general theories. Religion, he says,- is 
peculiar to man, and its " seed " is therefore in some 
quality peculiar to him. Such a quality is his curios- 
ity as to causes ; and though men vary, all men are " cu- 
rious in the search of the causes of their own good and 
evil fortune." When he cannot discover true causes, 
a man supposes such as are suggested by his fancy. 
Meanwhile his desire for security puts him in a state 
of "perpetual solicitude." He resembles Prometheus 
on the Caucasus, " a place of large prospect," though 
far from comfortable. He hath " his heart all the day 
long gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other 
calamity ; and has no repose nor pause of his anxiety 
but in sleep." The fear creates its object, as it does 
according to his previous remark, in the case of 
dreams. Men ignorant of causes have to invent "some 
power or agent invisible." It is thus true that the 



in.] MAN 153 

gods of the Gentiles " were at first created by human 
fear." Men could not, again, make any other guess 
as to the substance of these agents than that it was 
" the same with that of the soul of man," and that 
the soul of man was of the same substance with that 
which appears in a dream to sleepers or in a looking- 
glass to men awake. These they took for " real 
external substances/' and called them ghosts, that 
is " thin aerial bodies " — for nobody could think 
them really " incorporeal." This ignorance, again, led 
them to guess at omens and prognostics when they 
observed accidental coincidences which they took to 
imply real connections. Naturally they guessed these 
agents to resemble themselves, and pacified them by 
gifts and prayers. Hobbes has already noted that 
from the difficulty of distinguishing " dreams and 
other strong fancies from vision and sense " arose the 
old worship of satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and the like, 
and nowadays the opinion that rude people have of 
fairies, ghosts, and goblins, and the power of witches. 
(Witches, he has to interject, are rightly punished 
because they believe in their own power of doing 
mischief, not that "witchcraft is any real power.") 
Belief in fancies and ghosts is inculcated to keep in 
credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, 
and other such inventions of " ghostly men." "In 
these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of 
second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and 
taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth 
the natural seed of religion." The seeds have been 
cultivated by "two sorts of men": by founders of 
commonwealths and the lawgivers of the Gentiles on 
the one hand, who "used their own invention," and 



154 HOBBES [chap. 

on the other by "Abraham, Moses, and our blessed 
Saviour," who acted by " God's commandment and 
direction." Both desired to make men more apt to 
obedience, laws, peace, charity, and civil society; 
though in one case religion was part of " human 
politics," and in the other of "divine politics." He 
has then no difficulty in showing what grotesque 
results followed from the Gentile religions ; and when 
Bramhall founds upon this passage a charge of 
atheism, he can reply that his account of the origin 
of religion tells against the Gentile superstitions alone. 
The savage people feared " invisible powers," that is, 
something which they took to be gods; so that the 
fear of a god, though not the true one, was to them 
the beginning of religion, as the fear of the true 
God was the beginning of wisdom to the Jews and 
Christians. 

The political aspect of his theory which makes 
legislators the founders of religion will be noticed 
presently. In the Leviathan he gives some remark- 
able definitions : " Fear of power invisible feigned 
by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed 
— Religion; not allowed — Superstition; and when 
the power imagined is truly such as we imagine — 
True Religion" " True religion," it may be inferred, 
when not publicly allowed, is superstition. Whether 
Hobbes wishes to draw that inference we need not 
decide, nor need we ask how far he was quite con- 
vinced that the history of the Jewish belief presents 
so complete a contrast to the history of the religions 
founded by other legislators. 

It is enough to say that Hobbes is here on the way 
to much later speculation. A hundred years afterwards 



in.] MAN 155 

Hume in his Natural History of Religion treated the 
same topic with his usual acuteness, and suggested 
theories afterwards taken up by Comte. Later 
students of the science of religion have enormously 
extended the range of the inquiry and accumulated 
vast masses of evidence for various theories. In 
Hobbes's time, or, indeed, in Hume's or even Comte's, 
it was not possible to get beyond general conjectures. 
Hobbes knew next to nothing of the savage peoples to 
whom he refers, and can only guess as to their probable 
mode of thought. He is thinking chiefly of the 
classical mythologies, where he can find plenty of 
examples of grotesque and vicious deities. All that 
can be said is that he saw clearly the importance of 
the problems as to the growth of religions, though, in 
the absence of the requisite knowledge, he could only 
make a few very acute and pithy suggestions. 

If we now come to the question what was Hobbes's 
real position in regard to theology, I think that there 
can be only one answer. It is quite clear that his, 
like other materialistic systems, is incompatible with 
anything that can be called theism. His argument 
comes merely to this, that if the world was created — 
a point which, we see, he admits to be doubtful — the 
Creator must have been a Being of stupendous power, 
but one of whom we are unable to say anything else. 
The doctrine that he is " corporeal " or an infinitely 
" subtile " matter occupying space is merely a quaint 
attempt to evade the more natural inference that he is 
simply outside of all knowable relations. A religion 
of this kind is not likely to give much trouble to 
anybody ; and Hobbes's opponents were right in 
regarding him as virtually opposed to all possible 



156 HOBBES [chap. 

theology. What Hobbes himself thought is not quite 
so obvious. There is a presumption, indeed, that so 
bold a thinker must have seen the plain inferences 
from his principles. If he did not see them for him- 
self, they were pointed out by antagonists ; and though 
Hobbes, like most people, was apt to think that 
antagonism means misrepresentation, he could scarcely 
fail to see that they had in his case some ground for 
their comments. His answers, indeed, seem less to 
meet the arguments than to be ingenious devices for 
shifting the question. Hobbes certainly made his re- 
serves. When Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Pdliticus 
appeared in 1670 he said to Aubrey that Spinoza 
" has cut through me a bar's length, for I durst not 
write so boldly.". It would indeed be difficult to blame 
a timid old gentleman for not courting martyrdom. 
The blame for reservation belongs to the persecutor 
more than to the persecuted. It is, I think, far more 
remarkable that Hobbes spoke so frankly than that he 
did not reveal his whole mind. What he actually did 
was to use language which, though it caused general 
antipathy, and had implications quite clear to the 
qualified reader, would have been difficult to cite as 
proofs of punishable opinions in a legal indictment. 
Every one is agreed to admire the admirable candour 
and love of truth of Spinoza. Yet I think that the 
meaning attached by Spinoza to the word " God " is 
quite as unlike the ordinary meaning of theologians 
as the meaning attached to it by Hobbes. Both have 
defined their meaning quite frankly. If I say that an 
object is white and add openly that by white I mean 
what most people call black, I cannot be accused of 
deception, though I may be taking advantage of the 



in] MAN 157 

verbal ambiguity which more or less binds the hands 
of my enemies. It might be pleasanter to drop all 
disguise, but I am simply playing the game on the 
terms which they themselves have chosen. I do not, 
indeed, feel certain that Hobbes admitted even to 
himself the true nature of his position. He may have 
retained some of the horror for "atheism" in which 
he had been educated and thrown dust in his own 
eyes as well as in other people's. My chief reason for 
doubting is that, as we shall presently see, he relies in 
his political writings upon certain doctrines as to 
" the laws of God," which are apparently essential to 
his argument, and which could hardly be used by one 
to whom the words meant nothing. It is true that 
they do not in any case mean very much; still it is 
possible that Hobbes retained certain prepossessions 
which, as it seems to me, were really incompatible 
with his first principles. 

3. Determinism 

I must now speak of Hobbes's position in regard to 
the free-will controversy. 

To mention the topic is enough to give the alarm 
to all readers who are not in love with metaphysical 
hair-splitting for its own sake. It has become the 
type of fruitless controversy. Milton, in a familiar 
passage, intimated that the argument was only suitable 
to beings who had an indefinite amount of time on 
their hands and to whom any distraction would be 
agreeable. At times, indeed, the popular mind is 
startled by some supposed consequence of " deter- 
minism." It is supposed to imply the existence of a 



158 HOBBES [chap. 

Fate which, forces people, whether they like it or not, 
to commit so many murders in proportion to their 
population, or forces a sober person to take to drink 
because his grandfather was a drunkard. I am not 
about to argue the question, nor to follow in detail 
the brisk controversy between Hobbes and Bramhall. 
It will be enough to indicate briefly the position taken 
by Hobbes in regard to the contemporary phase of a 
perennial discussion. Milton's view was no doubt 
natural in the days of the Synod of Dort and the 
Westminster Assembly. The controversies between 
Catholics and Protestants necessarily involved conflicts 
over the free-will problem. In the Catholic doctrine 
the church is the appointed guardian of morality, 
conceived as a system of divine laws. The sacraments 
supply the means by which men may obtain grace to 
obey the law and receive forgiveness for transgressions. 
The whole system supposes that men have " free-will " 
and acquire "merit." They can either obey or dis- 
obey the law, and therefore they can deserve reward 
or punishment. The Protestant revolt against the 
authority of the Church led to the assertion of prin- 
ciples which when logically developed struck at the 
root of the whole system. A man can acquire no 
"merit," that is, no claim upon his Creator, for his 
obedience to the law. God, it must be supposed, 
approves a man for what he is, not for what he has 
done. One man may forgive another for an injury 
when compensation has been made. But the divine 
forgiveness can only mean that the will to do wrong is 
destroyed. Salvation must be gained, not by giving 
satisfaction for wrongs, but by the conformity of the 
man's nature to the divine order. The sinner must 



.V 



in.] MAN 159 

change his heart, not balance his accounts with his 
creditor. To the Protestant, therefore, the vital point 
became regeneration or conversion, and the sacraments 
have at most a secondary importance. But it then 
becomes difficult to admit "free-will. 7 ' Man clearly 
cannot make himself. He cannot even contribute to 
the work of divine grace ; for to allow him a share in 
the process is to admit some claim to " merit." Con- 
version, therefore, must be supernatural and the man 
merely passive. 

While the Catholic divines were elaborating systems 
of casuistry and turning morality into a code of laws 
analogous to human legislation, the Protestants were 
endeavouring to form theories as to the action of 
divine grace upon the human heart. They discussed 
the " Five Articles M at the Synod of Dort, laid down 
dogmas as to predestination, election, the atonement, 
the corruption of human nature and its various conse- 
quences. The metaphysical controversy was continued 
with attempts to accept compromises with the old 
systems, and to find a sanction for every dogma in 
the Bible, regarded as a supernatural act of parlia- 
ment, of which every word was divinely inspired. The 
discussion, instead of tending to unity, seemed to be 
only producing a ramification into diverging sects and 
conflicting dogmatisms. It might be shrewdly sus- 
pected that the reasoners were getting out of their 
depth, and it was clear that they were reaching some 
shocking results. When free-will has disappeared, it 
seems hard that a sinner should be tortured endlessly 
for doing what he was predestined to do. But how 
is the difficulty to be met ? A century later Jonathan 
Edwards was led by his stern Calvinism to write one 



160 HOBBES [chap. 

of the acutest of all treatises upon free-will, and to 
expound the doctrine of " deter minism," or, as it was 
called, " philosophical necessity." For the present, 
the discussion was mixed up with heterogeneous ele- 
ments, derived from the traditional dogmas. Hobbes, 
though he cared little for theological dogmas, was 
interested in the metaphysical part of the controversy. 
He is very little given to quote authorities ; but in his 
discussion with Bramhall, he claims to be supported 
on one essential point by Luther, Calvin, the Synod 
of Dort, and other Protestant authorities. "All the 
famous doctors of the Reformed Churches," he says, 
" and with them St. Augustine, are of the same opinion." 
The problem was in the air. 

In England, Calvinism was going out of fashion. 
The rationalist, disgusted by endless and fruitless 
controversy, hoped that unity might be reached by 
confining the creed to those points (if any) upon which 
all Christians, or perhaps all religions, were agreed. 
The metaphysical subtleties might be left to amuse 
professors in their studies. The Anglican divines had 
accepted Calvinism during the heat of their contro- 
versy with Borne. They were now opposing Calvinism 
on one side as much as Eome on the other. " What 
do the Arminians hold ? All the best preferments in 
England," was the famous quibble which marked the 
changed attitude. The Church of England, claiming 
to be the legitimate continuation of the mediaeval 
church, inherited the old theories as to the claims and 
functions of the priesthood, which necessarily involved 
a doctrine of free-will and a rejection of the Calvinism 
which had for a time found acceptance. Bramhall was 
a man of great vigour, who has been recently called by 



in.] MAN 161 

a competent critic, " one of the ablest champions " of 
the Church of England. He represented one special 
antipathy of his opponent. Hobbes was never tired 
of denouncing the " jargon " of the schoolmen, and 
regarded their doctrines as the great obstacle in the 
way of all intellectual progress. At the universities, 
however, the schoolmen were still held in honour and 
supplied the weapons for theological controversy. 
Bramhall had sufficient training in the art to wield 
their writings with familiarity and no little skill of 
fence. "When Hobbes speaks irreverently of these 
authorities, Bramhall seems to be as much astonished 
as disgusted. It seems as if he were quite unaware 
that a revolt against the whole system had long been 
in progress. He had obviously taken no interest in 
the scientific movement represented by Bacon or 
Hobbes. " It troubles him to see a scholar who hath 
been long admitted into the innermost closet of nature 
and seen the hidden secrets of more subtle learning, 
so far forget himself as to style school learning no 
better than a plain jargon, that is, a senseless gibberish 
or a fustian language like the chattering noise of 
sabots." Hobbes, he thinks, objects to scholastic dis- 
tinctions, because a sore eye is offended by the sight 
of the sun. Are all terms of art to be given up ? Is 
the moral philosopher to " quit his means and extremes 
. . ., his liberty of contradiction and contrariety " ? 
Must the " natural philosopher give over his intentional 
species . . . his receptive and eductive power of the 
matter, his qualities infusce or inflnxce, symbolce or dis- 
symbolce, his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam, 
. . . his sympathies and antipathies, his antiperistasis, 
etc. ? Are the astrologer and the geographer to leave 



I J 

I 



162 HOBBES [chap. 

their apogceum and perigceum, their arctic and antarctic 
poles, their equator, zodiac, zenith, meridian, horizon, 
zones, etc. ? " Hobbes will find that such things are 
necessary in every art. Let him go on shipboard and 
the mariners will not leave their starboard and larboard 
because he accounts it gibberish. Hobbes is quite 
ready to part with some of these words. Terms, he 
thinks, should be thrown away when they cannot be 
understood, and, when they can, should be used rightly. 
The astrologer (unless the bishop means astronomer l ) 
had better throw away his whole trade; but to the 
astronomer " equator," "zodiac," and so forth, are as 
useful as saw or hatchet to a carpenter. The " meta- 
physician " should quit both his terms and his profes- 
sion, and the divine use only such words as the hearer 
can understand. 

Bramhall therefore takes the airs of a philosophical 
expert dealing with a coarse ignoramus. He may be 
compared to a profound Hegelian lecturing a disciple 
of J. S. Mill or Mr. Herbert Spencer. The scholastic 
terminology appears obscure to Hobbes only because 
the subject-matter is difficult and the listener stupid. 
We do not now despise each other so heartily or express 
our contempt so frankly. Bramhall claims the victory 
with a confidence which is shared by his last editor, 
who only regrets that he should not have met with an 
antagonist "more worthy of him," and should have 
wasted time in replying to "peevish and feeble 
crotchets." I fancy that Bramhall is better remem- 
bered as Hobbes' s opponent than Hobbes as BramhalPs ; 

1 Bramhall had some belief in astrology. "All judicious 
astronomers hold that the stars ' incline ' though they do not 
'necessitate' the will." 



in.] MAN 163 

but they represent modes of thought so different, that 
it is easy to understand how each should be triumphant 
in the eyes of his own side. 

Hobbes's main purpose is obvious. He aspires to 
apply scientific methods to what we now call psycho- 
logical and sociological problems. This leads him, like 
many of his successors, to deny altogether the possi- 
bility of "free-will." Free-will, as he understands it, 
means the presence of an essentially arbitrary factor 
in human conduct. If we knew the whole character 
of a man and all the motives that act upon him, we 
should still, if free-will be a reality, be unable to predict 
his action. Everything else being the same, his choice 
is indeterminate. No one, of course, supposes his choice 
to be absolutely arbitrary ; but, so far as the arbitrary 
element remains, scientific certainty is impossible. 
Science, according to Hobbes, means the deduction 
of effects from causes. Free-will supposes the so-called 
chain to be broken. Given the cause, the effect may 
be this or that. If this be really implied in the con- 
ception of free-will, it is obvious that if it does not 
destroy the possibility, it limits the field of moral 
science. Hobbes's whole doctrine is radically opposed 
to this theory. Man, he has told us, is moved by 
" appetites " and " aversions." On one side these 
appetites are literally " motions" in the physical 
organism : reactions set up by contact with outside 
things, following as necessarily as the motion of the 
hands of the clock follows from the descent of the 
weight. On the other side they appear to us as 
phantasms — as hopes of good and fears of evil ; good 
being the same as the pleasurable, and evil as the pain- 
ful. When we have alternating and conflicting hopes 



164 HOBBES [chap. 

and fears, we call the process "deliberation." The 
resultant which determines the action is the last 
appetite, or, as we call it, the will. The " passions," 
appetites, aversions, hopes, and fears do not, he says, 
proceed from, they are the will. In his discussion with 
Bramhall, Hobbes does not lay stress upon the physical 
aspect. We know, he says, by reflecting on ourselves, 
that "deliberation or choice" means simply consider- 
ing the good and evil consequences of our actions. Re- 
flection will also convince us that nothing can begin 
without a cause. Everything is caused : our actions 
are caused by our expectations of good and evil, or 
(which is identical) of pleasure and pain. Whether 
we take it physiologically or psychologically, all con- 
duct is determined, or, as he calls it, "necessary." 
Freedom has still a precise meaning. It means the 
"absence of all impediments to action that are not 
contained in the nature of the agent." Thus defined, 
freedom is compatible with " necessitation." I am free 
when my action is necessitated by my own desires, 
not by external conditions. I am not free to walk out 
when the door is locked ; I am free when it is open. 
But I am "necessitated to use my freedom by the 
desire which causes me to walk out or not to walk 
out " ; only in this case the necessity is in my own 
nature, not in the surroundings. Freedom, therefore, 
as he constantly insists, means freedom to do what I 
will ; but freedom to will what I will is nonsense. A 
man, in his illustration, may be free to eat if there is 
no obstacle between him and his food. But he is not 
free to have or not to have an appetite for his food. 
That is settled by his organism. His will is the 
appetite. The " freedom " of the will, understood as 



in.] MAN 165 

denying causation, is an illusion. When we do not 
know the causes of volition, we assume that it is 
uncaused. Chance usually means our ignorance. 
Everything, he infers, is necessary. He ought rather, 
I think, to have argued that " necessary," like "pro- 
bable," " possible," and so forth, really refers to our 
knowledge, and means no more than " certain." 
His use of the word seems to imply that besides the 
man and his circumstances, there is an external fate 
which coerces him. 

So far, Hobbes is saying what has been said by 
la.ter " determinists." Bramhall calls him the " ring- 
leader of a new sect, or rather the first nominal 
Christian who has raised from its grave the ' sleeping 
ghost ' of the Stoics' fate." Hobbes, if Bramhall is 
correct, may be credited with giving the purely 
scientific version of the doctrine more or less implied 
in the Calvinist theology. To Bramhall it naturally 
appears monstrous and unintelligible. He holds it to 
be as clear that " there are free actions which proceed 
merely from election without any outward necessita- 
tion " as that there is a sun in the heavens. That is 
the usual appeal to our consciousness of free-will. 
Hobbes, however, might accept the phrase, if amended, 
by the admission that there is " inward necessitation." 
They agree that voluntary action implies " delibera- 
tion." Hobbes considers that deliberation is as much 
determined or necessitated as any other natural process. 
Bramhall replies by one of the distinctions which to 
Hobbes were meaningless "jargon." The "motives" 
and "passions," he says, only move the will morally; 
they do not determine it naturally. Moral determina- 
tion, according to Hobbes, is still determination. The 



166 HOBBES [chap. 

will, says Bramhall, hath a free dominion over itself ; 
she is the mistress of human actions ; the understanding 
is her trusty counsellor which she can consult or not 
as she pleases. Bramhall talks, says Hobbes, as if the 
will and the other faculties " were men or spirits in 
men's bellies." It is the man and not the will who 
decides. In this case Hobbes hits the mark. Bram- 
hall seems to accept a kind of psychological mythology 
in which abstractions like " the will " are personified, 
and logical distinctions made to imply different 
faculties in the concrete individual. Freedom no 
doubt is a rational concept, for it does not imply con- 
tradiction. But it does not follow that because a 
thing can be rightly described by an indeterminate 
phrase, a concrete indeterminate thing can exist. I 
will not, however, go into the argument. Bramhall, I 
take it, cannot confute the theory that conduct is 
caused, because there are no arguments by which it 
can be confuted. It is consistent in itself. Whether 
it can be proved or whether it is opposed to our 
immediate consciousness are other questions which I 
leave to those who are amused by them. Neither 
need I speak of other arguments, which fill a large 
space in the dispute, such as the argument from texts : 
whether the famous passage in the Epistle to the 
Eomans denies free-will; or the question to the 
paralytic person, " wilt thou be clean," implies that he 
had free-will. Nor will I speak of the puzzles about 
reconciling the divine prescience to " indeterminism " ; 
or the difference between admitting that the Creator 
permitted sin, and admitting that he caused it. The 
arguments are familiar, and to Hobbes, Bramhall 
seems to be constantly evading them by verbal dis- 



in.] MAN 167 

tinctions. It is a fight between a man of science look- 
ing at the facts, and a skilful dialectician dodging them 
under shelter of irrelevant concepts. 

The horror felt for determinism is due to what 
Hobbes calls " certain inconveniences " supposed to be 
its consequences. For that reason Hobbes wished, he 
says, to keep discussion private. A sinner might 
excuse himself — however illogically — by saying that 
his sin was predetermined. He did not want a 
murderer to say, " Mr. Hobbes tells me that I couldn't 
help it." 

Now a rational theory of determinism may be, as I 
think that it is, free from that objection. But Hobbes's 
version leads to consequences which are startling to 
the moralist and significant of his general attitude. 
Bramhall, as his opponents hold, confuses determinism 
with fatalism. He therefore argues that necessity 
makes laws unjust, and all advice, praise, blame, books, 
doctors, and tutors absurd. If the future is determined 
by "unalterable necessity, whether we be idle or 
industrious, why do we labour " ? The answer is of 
course obvious. The end is not determined irrespec- 
tively of the means. To say, "If I shall live till to- 
morrow, I shall live though I run myself through with 
a sword to-day," is absurd ; for if I am fated to live 
till to-morrow, I am also fated not to run myself 
through to-day. It is not absurd to make a law 
against crime, for the law alters the conditions, by 
affecting the will. A man, it may be, cannot refrain 
from murder when there is no law, but can when he 
knows he is to be hanged for it. Murderers, says 
Hobbes, are killed because they are noxious, not 
because they are " not necessitated." Hobbes, that is, 



1 



168 HOBBES [chap. 

accepts the purely deterrent theory of criminal law. 
You are not hanged for stealing sheep, as the judge 
said, but hanged in order that sheep may not be 
stolen. Bramhall, he says, " takes punishment for a 
kind of revenge." Hobbes, on the other hand, denies 
that any good man will afflict another, except to reform 
the will of the criminal or other men. " Nor can I 
understand, having only human ideas, that that 
punishment which neither intendeth the correction of 
the offender nor the correction of others can proceed 
from God ? " Hobbes, I take it, would in this be ap- 
proved by all rational law reformers. Punishment is 
justifiable so far only as it tends to diminish crime, and 
not because it gratifies a desire for vengeance which 
prompts the infliction of superfluous suffering. Most 
people, however, feel that his statement is insufficient. 
We have a right to destroy " all that is noxious," says 
Hobbes, " both beasts and men." We kill the murderer 
as we kill the wolf ; and we kill the wolf " justly when 
we do it in order to our own preservation." The 
theory seems to omit an essential element in the case. 
When we say that punishment should be " just " do we 
not imply that there is some essential difference between 
killing a wolf and hanging a murderer ? But Hobbes 
is forced by his logic to take up one very questionable 
position. Bramhall asks him what, upon his theory, is 
the meaning of praise and blame ? If all actions be 
necessary why are they praise worthy 'or blameworthy ? 
We blame people, says Hobbes, " because they please 
us not." Blaming means the saying that a thing is 
imperfect. A man is a fool or a knave even if he 
cannot help it. When it was said that Cato was 
good by nature, et quia aliter esse non potuit, he surely 



I 



in.] MAN 169 

received very high praise. If necessity does not make 
praise meaningless, why, asks B ram hall, do we not 
praise fire for burning ? Men are the termis-balls of 
destiny, and are good and bad only as a ball is good 
or bad. Hobbes replies that we do blame fire or 
poison as much as we do men. We do not seek to be 
revenged on them, "because we cannot make them ask 
forgiveness, as we would make men to do when they 
hurt us." The blame is the same in both, "but the 
malice of man is only against man." 

When Hobbes was pressed by areductio ad absurdum 
he generally had the courage to swallow the absurdity. 
In this case his logic had put him in an awkward 
place. Accepting his materialism and his thorough- 
going egoism, two men in opposition appear to us 
simply as two tennis-balls coming into collision. The 
man, no doubt, might be more consistently mischievous 
than the ball, as he is supposed to be malicious. The 
ball might sometimes give an impulse in the right 
direction, while the wicked man will always aim at 
doing injury. Still so long as a man considers his own 
feelings exclusively, the difference between blaming a 
poison and blaming the poisoner seems to be one of 
degree rather than of kind. The determinist may hold 
that Hobbes's error lay not in assuming that human 
motives act regularly, but in failing to take into 
account the man behind the thing, and those emotions 
of love and hatred which imply sympathy and a direct 
interest in the happiness or sorrow of others. The 
difficulty comes out when he is arguing the question of 
divine justice. Of God, according to Hobbes, we really 
know nothing, except that he is omnipotent. It is, 
then, only from that attribute that we can derive his 



170 HOBBES [chap. 

justice. Beasts are subject to death and torment ; yet 
" they cannot sin." It was God's will it should be so. 
" Power irresistible justifieth all actions, really and pro- 
perly, in whomsoever it be found." It is, he adds, to 
be found in God only. " God cannot sin because his 
doing a thing makes it just and consequently no sin ; 
and because whatsoever can sin is subject to another's 
law, which God is not ; and therefore it is blasphemy 
to say God can sin." Hobbes, it would seem, would 
have been more consistent if he had left out "justice " 
altogether. His God — the creator of the physical 
universe — is the author of what the man of science 
calls "the laws of nature." But they are simply the 
mechanical laws. It is not " just " that weights should 
balance each other when they are proportioned in a 
certain way to the length of the arms of a lever ; it is 
simply a fact. Morality has nothing to do one way 
or the other with the motions of the planets or the 
"laws of gravitation." The physical system of the 
universe is morally neutral. Morality can only begin 
with the conscious and sentient being. The assump- 
tion, however, that a " law of nature " means the same 
in both cases becomes very important in Hobbes's 
theory of the State, where we shall meet it again. 

Meanwhile it may be remarked for the old gentle- 
man's credit that he is shocked by one inference drawn 
by others. Bramhall has argued from " eternal tor- 
ments " : their existence proves liberty. " To take away 
liberty hazards heaven but undoubtedly it leaves no 
hell." Some people might consider that consequence 
to be a partial compensation. Bramhall, however, has 
no doubt about hell ; and the Calvinists, though they 
took away liberty, were quite convinced that the 



in.] MAN 171 

eternal torment of sinners was just. Hobbes was so 
far with them that he was bound to admit the justice 
of any actually existing arrangement, but he refuses 
to admit the existence of hell. Though God may 
"afflict a man, and not for sin, without injustice, shall 
we think him so cruel as to afflict a man, and not for 
sin, with extreme and endless torment? Is it not 
cruelty ? No more than to do the same for sin, when 
he that so doeth might without trouble have kept him 
from sinning." He asks, however, where the Scrip- 
tures say that " a second death is an endless life ? Or 
do the doctors say it ? Then perhaps they do but say 
so and for reasons best known to themselves." " It 
seemeth hard to say," he observes elsewhere, "that 
God, who is the father of mercies, that doth in heaven 
and earth all that he will, that hath the hearts of all 
men in his disposing, that worketh in men both to do 
and to will . . . should punish men's transgressions 
without any end of time and with all the extremity of 
torture that men can imagine and more." Hobbes 
managed to reconcile his theory to the orthodox view 
in a rather singular fashion. But modern divines 
will not quarrel with him for declining to believe in 
the old doctrine of damnation. 

One other remark must be added. Hobbes is not 
content with resolving the divine justice into power. 
Human justice is equally the creature of power. 
Natural goodness differs, he says, from moral. A 
horse has natural goodness if he is strong and gentle 
and so forth ; and if there were no laws, there would 
be as much " moral good " in a horse as in a man. It 
is the law which makes the difference. Law-makers 
may err ; but from obedience to the law, whether 



172 HOBBES [chap. hi. 

made in error or not, proceeds " moral praise." Since 
our notions of good and bad are relative and mean 
simply what pleases or displeases us, we can only get a 
common rule by subjection to the law. " All the real 
good, which we call honest and morally virtuous, is 
that which is not repugnant to the law, civil or natural ; 
for the law is all the right reason we have, and ... is 
the infallible rule of moral goodness." Our fallibility 
compels us to " set up a sovereign governor " and 
agree that his law shall be to us in the place of right 
reason. He illustrates this principle from card- 
playing. When men have turned up trumps, " their 
morality consisteth in not renouncing," that is, in 
observing the rules of the game ; and so " in civil 
conversation our morality is all contained in not dis- 
obeying of the laws." 

This doctrine — not at first sight very satisfactory — 
will be more intelligible when we have considered the 
Leviathan. 



rA. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE STATE 1 

1. Contemporary Controversies 

We come now to the third part of Hobbes's philo- 
sophy. He is to base a science of politics upon the 
doctrines already expounded. We become aware that 
there is a certain breach of continuity. To understand 
his line of thought, it is necessary to take note froth 
of the problems in which he was specially interested, 
and the form into which the arguments had been 
moulded by previous thinkers. He applies to the 
questions of the day certain conceptions already 
current in political theory, though he uses them in 
such a way as materially to alter their significance. 

Hobbes's theory in the first place involves the 
acceptance of a so-called " Law of Nature." " Nature," 
as we know, is a word contrived in order to introduce 
as many equivocations as possible into all the theories, 
political, legal, artistic, or literary, into which it enters. 

1 Hobbes's political theory is given in three books : the 
De Corpore Politico, which was the second part of his first 
treatise, and is reprinted in the fourth volume of the English 
works ; the De Cive, which is in the Latin works, vol. iii., 
and an English translation of which, by Hobbes himself, forms 
the second volume of the English works ; and the Leviathan, 
which forms the third volume of the English works. 

173 



174 HOBBES [chap. 

The " Law of Nature," as writers upon jurisprudence 
tell us, was invented by Roman lawyers with the help 
of Stoic philosophers. The lawyers, having to deal 
with the legal systems of the numerous races which 
came into contact with Eome, were led to recognise a 
certain body of laws common to all. Such law came 
to be considered as laid down by Nature. It was a 
product of the human nature common to Greeks and 
Eomans, and not affected by the special modifications 
by which Eomans are distinguished from Greeks. It 
belonged to the genus man, not to the species nation. 
The philosopher, meanwhile, took the Law of Nature 
to be law imposed by the divine author of nature, dis- 
coverable by right reason, and therefore common to 
all reasoning beings. The law in either case is 
" natural " because universally valid. But this may 
cover two diverging conceptions. To the man of 
science " nature " means everything actually existing. 
One quality cannot be more " natural " than another, 
though it may be more widely diffused. A scientific 
investigator of jurisprudence would inquire what sys- 
tems of law prevail in different countries, and would 
seek to discover the causes of uniformity or difference. 
The inquirer is so far simply concerned with the ques- 
tion of fact, and to him the exceptional is just as much 
a natural product as the normal legislation. The 
scientific point of view is that from which one might 
expect Hobbes to treat the question. He accepts, 
however, the Law of Nature in another sense. 
It meant an ideal, not an actual law, and tells 
us what ought to be, not what is. There may of 
course be a presumption that a law (if there is such 
law) which is universally accepted is also dictated by 



1 



iv.] THE STATE 175 

reason ; or a state may be so happily constituted that 
the perception that a law is reasonable may involve 
its acceptance in the actual system. But in any case 
the Law of Nature is supposed to be the type to which 
the actual law should be made to conform, and there- 
fore implies a contrast and occasional conflict between 
the two systems. 

Hobbes's view implies another distinction. Every 
one admits that laws may rightly vary according 
to circumstances within certain limits. There are 
laws, we may say, which it is right to obey because 
they are the law, and others which are the law because 
it is right to obey them. In England the law of the 
road tells carriages to keep to the left, and in France 
to keep to the right. We clearly ought to obey each 
rule in its own country. But there are other cases. 
In some countries the law permits or enforces rules of 
marriage which in other countries are held to be 
immoral and revolting. Is it true in this case also 
that each law is right in its own country, or is one set 
of laws to be condemned as contrary to the Law of 
Nature ? Given the Law of Nature, that is, how are 
we to decide what sphere of discretion is to be left to 
the legislator ? Can he deal with the most vital as well 
as the most trivial relations, or how is his proper sphere 
of authority to be denned? Where does "positive" 
law begin and natural law end ? This involves the 
problem, how far does the power of the legislature 
extend, or what is the relation between the sovereign 
and the subject. That was a problem which had not 
been discussed in the classical philosophy. Man as a 
"political animal" was so identified with the State 
that citizenship was an essential part of him. Different 



176 HOBBES [chap. 

forms of government might be compared, but the 
individual could not be conceived as existing indepen- 
dently of the State. To Hobbes the State had become 
an " artificial " construction, and therefore its relation 
to the units of which it was constructed had to be 
settled and was vitally important. 

The theory of sovereignty had become interesting 
when there were rival claimants to sovereignty. The 
Christian Church, beginning as a voluntary association 
outside the State, and appealing to men in their 
individual capacity, had become a gigantic organisation 
with an elaborate constitution and legal system. It 
had come into collision, alliance, and rivalry with the 
empire. According to the accepted theory, both 
powers had legitimate claims to allegiance. Pope and 
emperor were compared to the sun and moon, though 
it might be disputed which was the sun and which was 
the moon, or whether they were not rather two inde- 
pendent luminaries. In the great controversies which 
arose, the Church had an obvious advantage. It 
derived its authority from direct revelation. It 
represented on earth the supreme Being, and was 
entrusted by him with power to enforce the moral laws 
which coincide with the Law of Nature. As the empire 
could claim no special revelation, the advocates of its 
claims had to find some independent support for them 
in the Law of Nature. To the question, then, whence 
is derived the obligation to obey the State, or rather 
the ruler, there was but one obvious answer. "All 
obligation," says Hobbes, " derives from contract." 
It is part of the Law of Nature that man should 
observe compacts. If therefore the relation between 
sovereign and subject depends upon a compact, there 



iv.] THE STATE 177 

is a sufficient obligation to obedience though the ruler 
has not a special commission from God. It could 
not, it is true, be proved that such a compact had 
ever been made, nor that, if made in one generation, 
it would be binding on the next, nor was it possible to 
say what were the exact terms of the supposed com- 
pact. But such cavils were trifles. They could be 
met by saying that there was an " implicit " contract, 
and that it, no doubt, prescribed reasonable terms. 
This theory was gradually developed in the middle 
ages, and when Hobbes was a young man it had 
acquired especial currency from the great book in 
which Grotius had adopted it, when applying the Law 
of Nature to regulate the ethics of peace and war. 1 

This set of conceptions gives Hobbes's starting- 
point, though in his hands the Law of Nature and the 
social compact received a peculiar development, or, 
indeed, seemed to be turned inside out. He applied 
them to the great controversies in which he and his 
contemporaries were specially interested. The com- 
plicated struggles of the Keformation period had 
raised issues which were still undecided. Church and 
State, whatever the theory of their relations, were so 
closely connected as to form parts of one organism, 
and a separation of them, such as is contemplated 
by modern speculation, was unthinkable. If the two 
bodies had conflicting claims, they were also recipro- 

1 A very remarkable book, the Politics of Johannes Althusius 
(1557-163G), that appeared in 1603, anticipated much that Hobbes 
afterwards said, and played a considerable part in the evolu- 
tion of the theory of " Naturrecht." Professor Gierke's most 
learned and interesting book upon Althusius gives a full 
account of his doctrine and of his relation to Hobbes among 
many others. 

N 



178 HOBBES [chap. 

cally necessary. Their systems of legislation were not 
independent, but interpenetrating. Each implied the 
other, and the State was bound to suppress heresy, as 
the Church to condemn rebellion. The disruption of 
the old system implied both civil and foreign war. 
The lines of cleavage ran through both Church and 
State, and in each fragment the ecclesiastical and 
secular system had to readjust their relations. When 
in England Henry VIII. renounced the authority of 
the pope, he had to become a bit of a pope himself. 
In Scotland the Church, though it might suppose that 
it had returned to primitive purity, could not be 
expected for that reason to relinquish its claims to 
authority over the laity. In the famous "Monarcho- 
machist" controversy, Jesuits agreed with Scottish 
Protestants and French Huguenots in defending 
tyrannicide. They had a common interest in limiting 
the claims of the secular power. Jacques Clement 
and Eavaillac gave a pointed application in France to 
the Jesuit doctrine; and the Scots had to make a 
case against Queen Mary. Meanwhile the claims of 
the Catholic Church were the cause or the pretext of 
the warfare which culminated in the Spanish Armada. 
The patriotic Englishman regarded the pope as the 
instigator or accomplice of the assailants of our national 
independence. Persecution of priests seemed to be 
necessary, even if cruel, when priests were agents of 
the power which supported hostile fleets and inspired 
murderous conspiracies. Throughout the seventeenth 
century the protestant Englishman suffered from 
" papacy " on the brain, and his fear flashed into panic 
for the last time when Hobbes was dying. During his 
youth the keenest controversy had been raging over 



iv.] THE STATE 179 

the claims of the papacy. James I. himself and his 
most learned divines, such as Andrewes and Donne, 
were arguing against the great Catholic divines, 
Suarez and Bellarmine. The controversy turned 
especially upon the imposition of the oath renouncing 
the doctrine of the right of the pope to depose kings. 
To that right was opposed the "divine right of 
kings " : thereby being meant, not that kings had a 
" right divine to govern wrong," but that the king's 
right was as directly derived from Heaven as the rights 
of the Church. 

Hobbes, as we shall see, was deeply impressed by 
these problems. The power of the Catholic Church to 
enforce its old claims was rapidly disappearing; but 
men are often most interested in discussing the means 
of escaping the dangers of the day before yesterday. 
While Hobbes was elaborating his system, great polit- 
ical issues seemed to turn* upon the relation between 
the spiritual and ^secular authority. Meanwhile the 
purely political were inextricably mixed up with 
ecclesiastical questions. James's formula, " no bishop, 
no king," expressed the fact. The Church of England 
was in the closest alliance with the royal authority ; 
"passive obedience" to the king became almost an 
essential doctrine, even with liberal Anglican divines ; 
and the rebellion was the outcome of the discontent in 
both spheres. In England the claim of parliament to 
a share of power came first, but the power was to be 
applied on behalf of religious Puritanism. In Scotland 
the Church question was most prominent ; but the 
Church, in the rule of which, as James complained, 
Tom, Dick, and Harry had claimed to have a voice, 
also represented the aspirations of the nation. The 



180 HOBBES [chap. 

political problem was equally important, whatever 
might be the motives for demanding political power. 
The question in England was whether the ancient 
parliamentary institutions were to be preserved and 
developed, or to be allowed to fall into decay as in 
other European countries where the State was being 
organised on different lines. In later days, writers, 
who held the British Constitution to be an embodi- 
ment of perfect wisdom, naturally venerated the 
Hampdens and Eliots as representatives of the ulti- 
mately victorious, and therefore rightful cause. 

As Hobbes altogether condemned their principles, 
we must remind ourselves how things appeared at 
the time. To men who desired a vigorous national 
government — which is surely a very reasonable desire 
— the claims of the parliamentary party appeared to 
be a hopeless obstacle. All men admitted that the 
king was to have the fullest authority over the 
national policy ; he might make war or peace without 
consulting anybody; and if he could make it at his 
own expense, parliament had no ground for inter- 
ference. The only thing which it could do was to 
refuse money if he wanted it for a policy which it 
disliked. It was as if the crew of a ship of war gave 
the command unreservedly to the captain, but, if 
they disliked the direction in which he was steering, 
showed disapproval by turning off the steam. That 
obviously would be a clumsy method. Parliament did 
not superintend or give general directions, but could 
throw the whole system out of gear when it pleased. 
We know, of course, how the struggle resulted in the 
supremacy of parliament, and of that party organisa- 
tion which enabled it to act as a unit, and to regulate 



iv.] THE STATE 181 

the whole national policy with a certain continuity of 
purpose. In Hobbes's time not only could such a 
system, as historians agree, occur to no one, but if it 
had occurred it would have been impracticable. To 
be efficient it required, not merely an exposition of 
principles, but the development of a mutual under- 
standing between the different classes, which was not 
less essential because not expressed in any legal docu- 
ment. The art of parliamentary government has to 
be learnt by practice. 

Another remark is now pretty obvious. The British 
people managed to work out a system which had, as 
we all believe, very great advantages and may justify 
some of the old panegyrics. Men could speak more 
freely — if not always more wisely — in England than 
elsewhere, and individual energy developed with many 
most admirable, if with some not quite admirable con- 
sequences. But the success was won at a cost. The 
central authority of the State was paralysed; and 
many observers may admit that in securing liberty at 
the price of general clumsiness and inefficiency of all 
the central administrative functions, the cost has been 
considerable. It is desirable to remember this point 
when we come to Hobbes's special theories. iTo him 
the demands of the parliamentary party appeared to 
imply a hopeless disorganization of the political 
machinery. His political writings, though professing 
to be a piece of abstract logic, are also essentially 
aimed at answering these questions. The vital pro- 
blem involved was, as he thought, what is sovereignty 
and who should be sovereign ? The State, on one 
side, was struggling with the Church — whether the 
Church of Rome or the Church of Scotland, — and, on 



182 HOBBES , Ichap. 

the other hand, the supreme power was claimed for 
king alone, for parliament alone, and for some com- 
bination of the two. What will a scientific analysis 
enable us to say as to the general nature of the 
supreme power and as to the best constitution of a 
body politic. The country, as he says, for some years 
before the civil war, " was boiling over with questions 
concerning the rights of dominion and the obedience 
due from subjects " : a state of things which " ripened 
and plucked " from him the third part of his philo- 
sophy before the other parts were ready. 

2. The Social Contract 

Hobbes's political theories are expounded in the 
De Corpore Politico (the little treatise of 1640), the De 
Cive, and the Leviathan. The title of the last of these 
works is suggested by certain words in the Book of 
Job : " Non estpotestas super terram quce comparetur eiP 
They are printed at the head of the quaint allegorical 
title-page, where a composite giant, his body made of 
human beings, holds the sword in one and a crosier in 
the other hand, while beneath him is a wide country 
with a town, a fort, and a church in the foreground, and 
below it are various symbols of temporal and spiritual 
power. The great Leviathan, he tells us, is that 
mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, 
our peace and defence. But he is also a machine. We 
are to take him to pieces in imagination, as we actually 
take to pieces a watch to understand its construc- 
tion. We have already seen the statement of Hobbes's 
method. It is impossible to deduce the properties of 
this complex mechanism by the synthetical method j 



iv.] THE STATE 183 

but by analysing the observed " motions of the mind " 
we can discover its essential principles. Justice, he 
says, means giving to each man his own. How does a 
man come to have an " own " ? Because community of 
goods breeds contention, while reason prescribes peace. 
From the regulation of the " concupiscible " nature by 
the " rational " arises the system of moral and civil 
laws embodied in the great Leviathan. We have to 
examine this process in detail. Men have, as we have 
seen, " a perpetual and restless desire of power after 
power." In the next place, men are naturally equal. 
The weakest in body, at any rate, may kill the 
strongest, and there is a still greater equality in mind. 
This doctrine of natural equality he tries to establish 
by rather quaint arguments. " Every man," he says, 
" thinks himself as wise, though not as witty or learned 
as his neighbours. What better proof can there be of 
equality of distribution than that every man is con- 
tented with his share ?" That is hardly convincing; 
but what Hobbes means to say is that no man has 
such a superiority over his fellows as would make him 
secure in the chaotic struggle of " the state of nature." 
When two men want the same thing, therefore, each 
will have a chance. Competition, diffidence (a distrust 
of each other), and glory (the desire, we may say, for 
prestige) are the three principal causes of quarrel. 
" The first maketh men invade for gain ; the second 
for safety ; the third for reputation." When there is 
no common power to overawe, there will be a " war of 
every man against every man." War, he explains, is 
not confined to actual fighting, but exists where there 
is a " known disposition thereto " and " no assur- 
ance to the contrary." So long as this state 



184 HOBBES [chap. 

continues, "there is no place for industry, because the 
fruit thereof is uncertain/' and (besides many other 
wants) " no arts, no letters, no society, and which is 
worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent 
death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, 
brutish, and short." Do you object to this account of 
man? Look at experience. Does not a man arm 
himself when he is going a journey? Does he not 
lock the chests in his own house, although he knows 
that there are public officers to protect them ? What 
opinion does that imply of his fellow subjects or of 
his servants ? " Does he not as much accuse mankind 
by his actions, as I do by my words ? " 

But was there ever such a " state of nature " ? Not 
perhaps over the whole world, though in America 
many savages live in this nasty and brutish fashion. 
If, however, that were not so with particular men, 
" yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign autho- 
rity, because of their independency, are in continual 
jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators; 
having their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed on 
one another — that is their forts, garrisons, and guns 
upon the frontiers of their kingdoms — and continual 
spies upon their neighbours." The argument is 
certainly not obsolete, nor the remark which follows. 
" Because they uphold thereby the industry of their 
subjects, there does not follow from it that misery 
which accompanies the liberty of particular men." 
Now where every man is at war with every man, " the 
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have 
no place. Where there is no common power there is 
no law ; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud 
are in war the two cardinal virtues." Justice and 



iv.] THE STATE 185 

injustice "relate to men in society, not in solitude." 
In such a state of things, there can be " no mine and 
thine distinct, but only that to be every man's that he 
can get and for so long as he can keep it." 

u . . . the good old rule 
Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 

And they should keep who can," 

as Wordsworth puts it. This is the " ill condition " 
in which man is placed "by mere nature." There is a 
possibility of his getting out of it, partly because some 
passions, fear of death, desire of comfort, and hope of 
securing it induce men to peace, and partly because 
" reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace." 

This is Hobbes's famous theory that the "state of 
nature " is a state of war. It does not imply, he says, 
that men are " evil by nature." The desires are not 
themselves wicked, though at times they may cause 
wicked actions. " Children grow peevish and do hurt 
if you do not give them all they ask for ; but they do 
not become wicked till, being capable of reason, they 
continue to do hurt." A wicked man is a child grown 
strong and sturdy ; and malice is a defect of reason at 
the age when reasonable conduct is to be expected. 
Nature provides the faculties but not the education. 
The doctrine should be tested by its truth, not by its 
pleasantness. Hobbes accepts in part the method of 
Machiavelli, who clearly announced that he was con- 
cerned with what actually happened, not with what 
ought to happen. To adopt that plan is to undertake 
to tell unpleasant truths, and to tell unpleasant truths 
is, according to most readers, to be " cynical." Hobbes 



186 HOBBES [chap. 

incurred the blame; but, at least, lie was so far 
pursuing the truly scientific method. Up to this 
point, indeed, he was taking the line which would 
be followed by a modern inquirer into the history of 
institutions. Warfare is part of the struggle for 
existence out of which grow states and the whole 
organisation of civilised societies. A modern would 
maintain, like Hobbes, that in admitting the part 
played by selfish force in the development of society, 
he does not assert the wickedness of human nature. 
He only asserts that the good impulses cannot acquire 
the desirable supremacy until a peaceful order has been 
established by the complex struggles and alliances 
of human beings, swayed by all their passions and 
ambitions. But here we come upon an element in 
Hobbes's theory of which I have already spoken, 
namely, the Law of Nature. The "laws of human 
nature," in the scientific sense, expressing the way in 
which human beings actually behave, are identified 
with the Law of Nature as an ideal or divine law, 
which declares how men ought to behave. Hobbes 
professes to show that the sovereign has certain 
" rights " as well as certain powers ; and, moreover, 
that those rights are far from being recognised in 
many countries and especially in England. He is not 
simply pointing out how it came to pass that Charles I. 
and his parliament had got into conflict, and thence 
inferring the best mode of settling the disputed 
points ; but he desires to show that the " Law of 
Nature " decides the question of their conflicting 
rights. The "Nature" which prescribes the right 
cannot be identical with the " Nature " which gives 
the power and determines the facts. 



iv.] THE STATE 187 

Hobbes's next point, therefore, is to show what are 
the " Laws of Nature." Every man has a right, he 
says, to use his own power for his own preservation. 
A " Law of Nature " is a precept found out by reason, 
forbidding him to do the contrary : that is, to destroy 
himself or his means of self-preservation. Now, in the 
u state of nature " just described, every man has a 
right to everything — even to another man's bod} r . 
He has a " right/' that is, because nature makes self- 
preservation the sole aim of each man, even when it 
implies the destruction of others. But it is plain that, 
while this is the case, no man's life or happiness is 
secure. "Nature," therefore, orders men to get out 
of the " state of nature " as soon as they can. Hence 
we have the twofold principle. It is the " fundamental 
law of nature " that every man should " seek peace and 
follow it " ; and the fundamental " right of nature " is 
that a man should defend himself by every means he 
can. Peace makes self-defence easy. It follows that 
a man should " lay down his right to all things " if 
other men will lay down theirs. This is identified by 
Hobbes with the " law of the Gospel " : " Whatsoever 
you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them" 
or (which he takes to be equivalent), " Quod tibi fieri 
non vis alteri ne feceris." A man may simply renounce 
or he may transfer a right. In either case, he is said to 
be " obliged" not to interfere with the exercise of a right 
by those to whom he has abandoned or granted it. 
It is his "duty" not to make his grant void by hinder- 
ing men from using the right ; and such hindrance 
is called " injustice." We thus have Hobbes's defini- 
tions of Obligation, Duty, and Justice. Injustice, he 
observes, is like an absurdity in logic. It is a contra- 



ry 






fc 



188 HOBBES [chap. 

diction of what you had voluntarily asserted that you 
would do. 

From these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to deduce 
other "Laws of Nature," and finds no less than 
nineteen. The third law (after those prescribing 
peace and self-defence) is that men should keep their 
" covenants." He afterwards deduces the duties 
of gratitude, sociability, admission of equality — the 
breach of which is pride — equity, and so forth. If, he 
says, the " deduction" seems "too subtile," they may 
all be regarded as corollaries from the " golden rule." 
That rule, however, is itself deducible from the rule of 
" self-preservation." We do good to others in order 
that they may do good to us. " No man giveth," as 
he says, by way of proving that gratitude is a virtue, 
" but with intention of good to himself." ..." Of 
all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own 
good." That, one would rather have supposed, is a 
reason for not being "grateful" to anybody. We 
must interpret "gratitude" in the prospective sense — 
with an eye to the favours to come. It is prudent to 
pay your debts in order to keep up your credit. In 
one case he seems to deviate a little from his egoism. 
Justice means keeping covenants — obedience, that is, 
to his " third law." A man who does a just action 
from fear, as he remarks, is not therefore a just man ; 
his "will is not framed by the justice, but by the 
apparent benefit of what he is to do. That which 
gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain 
nobleness or gallantness of courage, rarely found, by 
which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment 
of his life to fraud or breach of promise." He should 
have held, it would seem, that the will is always 



V 



iv.] THE STATE 189 

framed by the "apparent benefit." The inconsistency 
(if there be one, for even this appears to be a case of 
" glory ") is explicable. Hobbes has to deduce all the 
"Laws of Nature" from the law of self-preservation. 
That, no doubt, may show the expediency of making 
a " covenant w with your neighbours, and even the 
expediency of generally keeping it. But it must also 
be granted that there are occasions in which expediency 
is in favour of breaking covenants. The just man, the 
ordinary moralist would say, is a man who keeps his 
word even to his own disadvantage. That, on the 
strictest interpretation of Hobbes, is impossible. No- 
body can do it. Justice, however, in the sense of 
" covenant-keeping/' is so essential a part of his system, 
that he makes an implicit concession to a loftier tone 
of morality, and admits that a man may love justice 
for its own sake. This, however, seems to be an over- 
sight. Hobbes is content to take for granted that 
each man will profit by that which is favourable to 
all, or that the desire for self-preservation will always 
make for the preservation of society. The Law of 
Nature, we see, is simply an application of the purely 
egoistic law of self-preservation. It represents the 
actual forces which (in Hobbes's view) mould and 
regulate all human institutions. But in sanctioning 
so respectable a virtue as "justice," it takes a certain 
moral colouring, and may stand for the ideal Law of 
Nature or Eeason to which the actual order ought to 
conform. 

There is another reserve to be made: the laws of 
nature are not properly laws. They are only " theorems 
concerning what conduceth " to self-preservation. They 
become laws proper when they are " delivered in the 



190 HOBBES [chap. 

Word of God" ; and he proceeds in the De Give to prove 
them by a number of texts, and comes to the edifying 
conclusion that the " Law of Nature " is the Law of 
Christ. It is a theorem, for example, that to keep your 
word tends to self-preservation. But law means the com- 
mand of a rightful superior ; and until such a command 
has been given, it is not properly a " Law of Nature " 
that you should keep your word. The laws are always 
binding inforo interno : you are always bound to desire 
that they should come into operation ; but they are 
not always binding inforo externo; that is, you are not 
always bound to " put them in act." Self-preservation 
is the fundamental law. But till other people keep 
the laws, obedience to them does not tend to self- 
preservation. If you are peaceful and truthful when 
other men are not, you will " procure your own certain 
ruin, contrary to all the Laws of Nature." That 
obviously will be the case in the " state of nature" 
where fraud and force are the cardinal virtues. There 
is, no doubt, a truth in this contention. The moral 
law, to become operative in fact, requires a certain 
amount of reciprocity. Actual morality clearly de- 
pends upon the stage of social evolution. In a 
primitive society, where men have to defend them- 
selves by the strong hand, we can hardly condemn 
the man who accepts the standard methods. Achilles 
would be a brutal ruffian to-day ; but when Troy was 
besieged, he was a hero deserving admiration. He 
was perhaps in the true line of development. The 
chief of a savage tribe is, on the whole, preparing the 
way for a peaceful order. Even in the present day 
a philanthropist living in one of the regions where the 
first-comer is ready to shoot him at sight, might think 



iv.] THE STATE 191 

it right to carry a revolver in his pocket, and, if neces- 
sary, to anticipate the shooting. Moral rules become 
useful in proportion as society perceives their value, 
and is more or less inclined to adopt them in practice. 
Otherwise, the man whose morality was of a higher 
type would be thrown away or summarily stamped out. 
Ought a man to be several generations in advance of 
his time ? That is a pretty problem which I do not 
undertake to solve. In any case, Hobbes had a real 
and important meaning. He saw, that is, that the 
development of morality implies the growth of a 
certain understanding between the individuals com- 
posing the society, and that until this has been reached 
ideal morality proper to a higher plane of thought is 
impracticable if not undesirable. This leads to the 
theory of the social contract — the mutual agreement 
by which the great Leviathan is constructed. 

The Law of Nature prescribes peace as a condition 
of security. But the law is " contrary to our natural 
passions," and " covenants without the sword are but 
words and of no strength to secure a man at all." It 
is therefore essential to create a common power to 
keep men in awe. Such creatures as bees and ants 
do, indeed, live at peace with each other and are 
therefore called by Aristotle " political creatures." 
Why cannot men do so? Because men compete and 
have private aims different from the common good. 
Men too can talk and therefore reason; they are 
" most troublesome when most at ease," because they 
then love to show their wisdom and control their 
rulers. The great difference, however, is that their 
agreement is "by covenant, which is artificial," 
whereas bees agree by "nature." By "artificial" 



192 HOBBES [chap. 

we must here understand what is made by reason. 
Since men can live, for they do sometimes live in 
a " state of nature/' a political society is not essential 
to man as man. It is a product of his voluntary 
action, and therefore implies a conscious deliberation. 
The only way, then, in which the common power can 
be erected and security established, is that men should 
" confer all their power and strength upon one man 
or one assembly of men." Then wills will be "reduced 
into one will, and every man acknowledge himself to 
be the author of whatsoever is done by the ruler so 
constituted." " This is more than consent or concord ; 
it is a real unity of them all in one and the same 
person, made by covenant of every man with every 
man ; in such manner as if every man should say to 
every man : 1 1 authorise and give up my right of govern- 
ing myself to this man, or this assembly of men, on this 
condition that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise 
all his actions in like manner' " The Leviathan, or mortal 
god, is instituted by this .covenant. He is the vital 
principle of political association, and from it Hobbes 
will proceed to deduce the whole of his doctrine. 

Before considering its terms, one remark may be 
made. It is sometimes asked whether the expounders 
of the " social contract " in various forms meant to be 
understood historically. Did they mean to assert that 
at some remote period a number of men had held a 
convention, like the American States, and signed 
articles of association, to bind themselves and their 
posterity? Occasionally they seem to be driven to 
accept that position. Hobbes, however, can hardly 
have entertained such a belief. He is as ready as 
anybody to give an historical account of the origin 



iv.] THE STATE 193 

of actual constitutions. In his Dialogue upon the 
Common Laiv, for example, he, like Montesquieu, 
traces the origin of the British Constitution to the 
forests of Germany, and the system once prevalent 
among the " savage and heathen " Saxons. He re- 
cognises in the Leviathan that governments may arise 
from conquest or the development of the family as 
well as by " institution," and endeavours to show that 
the nature of sovereignty will be the same in whatever 
way it may have originated. A contract, it always 
has to be admitted, may be " implicit " (that is, may 
really be no contract at all), and there can be no doubt 
that, in point of fact, the social contract, if it exists, 
must at the present day be of that kind. Nobody is 
ever asked whether he w r ill or will not agree to it. 
Men, as members of a political society, accept a certain 
relation to the sovereign, and unless they did so the 
society would be dissolved. That such an understand- 
ing exists, and is a condition of the existence of 
th? State, would be enough for Hobbes, whatever the 
origin of the understanding. As we shall presently 
see, he would be more consistent, if not more edifying, 
if he threw the contract overboard altogether. 

We must look more closely at the terms of the 
hypothetical contract. The first point is that Hobbes's 
version differs from the earlier forms in this, that it is 
not a contract between the subject and the sovereign, 
but between the subjects themselves. The sovereign 
is created by it, but is not a party to it. This is 
Hobbes's special and most significant contribution to 
the theory. His reason is plain. Men, in a state 
'^of nature, that is, not acknowledging any common 
authority, cannot make a contract collectively. They 



194 HOBBES [chap. 

are, in that case, simply a "multitude." His own 
theory, he says in a note to the De Cive, depends upon 
clearly understanding the different senses in which 
this word may be used. A multitude means first a 
multitude of men. Each has his own will and can 
make compacts with his neighbours. There may be 
as many compacts as there are men, or pairs of men, 
but there is then no such thing as a common will or 
a contract of the multitude considered as a unit. 
This first becomes possible when they have each agreed 
that the will of some one man or of a majority shall 
be taken for the will of all. Then the multitude 
becomes a "person," and is generally called a " people." 
One man is a "natural person," and their common 
representative is an " artificial person," or, as he puts 
it, "bears the person of the people." It is, therefore, 
impossible to take the social contract as made between 
the sovereign and the subjects. Till they have become 
an "artificial person" they cannot make a contract as 
a whole. This social contract is presupposed in all 
other contracts. It must be at the foundation of all 
corporate action, and a compact between the sovereign 
and the subjects would suppose the previous existence 
of a unity which is only created by the contract itself. 
In the "state of nature" men can promise but cannot 
make a binding contract. A contract means an ex- 
change of promises, and in a " state of nature " neither 
party can depend upon the other keeping his word. 
Obligation follows security. It seems rather difficult, 
perhaps, to see how you can ever get out of the state 
of nature, or why the agreement of each man to take 
the sovereign will for his own, is more likely to be 
observed than any other agreement. Hobbes, how- 



iv.] THE STATE 195 

ever, assumes that this is possible; and when the 
Leviathan has once been constructed, it embodies the 
common will. The multitude becomes a person, and 
law, natural and civil, becomes binding. 

3. " T7ie Leviathan " 

We have thus got our sovereign. His will is the 
will of all. He is under no obligation to his subjects, 
but is the source of all obligation. The ultimate 
justification of his existence, however, is still the desire 
for self-preservation, and for peace as an essential 
condition. Hence, indeed, arise the only limitations 
to the power of the sovereign which Hobbes admits. 
Since I aim at my own security, I cannot lay down 
the right of resisting men who would kill me, or even 
men " who would inflict wounds or imprisonment." 
I may indeed agree that you shall kill me, but I 
cannot agree that I will not resist you. A criminal 
may be properly put to death, for he has agreed 
to the law ; but he must be guarded on his way to 
execution, for he has not bargained not to run 
away. He adds another quaint exception. A man 
may refuse to serve as a soldier, at least if he 
can offer a substitute. "And," he adds, " there is 
allowance to be made for natural timorousness, not 
only to women, of whom no such dangerous duty is ex- 
pected, but also to men of feminine courage." (They 
may have been born in 1588.) In such cases, it seems, 
disobedience does not "frustrate the end for which 
sovereignty was ordained." The principle applies to 
the case of de facto government — when the sovereign 
cannot defend me I need not obey him. 



196 HOBBES [chap. 

With these exceptions, the power of the sovereign 
is unlimited. The " mortal god " is omnipotent. The 
covenant once made is indefeasible. The parties to 
it cannot make a new covenant inconsistent with it. 
They cannot transfer their allegiance without the 
consent of the sovereign. Since there is no power of 
revising the covenant, it cannot be broken without 
injustice. Hobbes, we see, speaks of the sovereign 
as " representing " the subjects. But he does not 
" represent " them as a member of parliament repre- 
sents his constituents, or as a delegate bound to carry 
out their wishes. He " represents " them in the sense 
that whatever he does is taken to be done by them. 
They are as responsible for all his actions as though 
he was their volition incorporated. It follows that 
his power can never be forfeited. The subjects have 
done whatever he has done, and in resisting him 
would be calling themselves to account. The social 
contract, considered as a covenant with the ruler, was 
alleged as a justification of rebellion. Hobbes inverts 
the argument. It can never be right to allege a 
"covenant" with the ruler because that would justify 
rebellion. Since there is no common judge in such a 
case, this would mean an appeal to the power of the 
sword, and the power of the sword is what you have 
abandoned in covenanting. No individual again can 
dissent. If he does, he "may justly be destroyed" 
by the rest. If he consented to covenant, he implicitly 
consented to the covenant actually made. But, if 
not, he is left in the state of nature and may, there- 
fore, "without injustice be destroyed by any man 
whatsoever." 

The Leviathan, thus constituted, has therefore an 



iv.] THE STATE 197 

indefeasible title and is irresponsible. He is the 
ultimate authority from whom all rights are derived. 
The end of his institution is peace. A right to the end 
implies a right to the means. The sovereign may^do 
whatever promotes peace. Since men's actions proceed 
from their opinions, he may suppress the publication of 
opinions tending in his opinion to disturb the peace. 
Since contention arises from the clashing of rights, he 
must determine men's rights ; or, in other words, must 
be the supreme legislator. The law means the com- 
mand of the sovereign, and whatever he commands is 
therefore law. He must, again, have the "right of judi- 
cature " ; the right to hear and decide all controversies 
arising out of the law. The sword of justice belongs 
to him, and "the sword of justice must go with the 
sword of war." The sovereign has to protect the 
people against foreign enemies as well as to protect 
each man against his neighbour. He must decide upon 
war and peace ; and when war is necessary must decide 
what forces are necessary ; and, further, must decide 
how much money is required to pay for them. " The 
command of the militia " (the military forces in general), 
" without other institution, maketh him that hath it 
sovereign; and, therefore, whosoever is made general 
of an army, he that hath the sovereign power is always 
generalissimo." Other powers, such as the appoint- 
ment of ministers, the distribution of honours, and the 
infliction of punishments, obviously follow. 

The Leviathan, thus invested with fullest power of 
legislature, judicature, and military command, with 
authority over opinion, and right to levy taxes, 
appeared to Hobbes's contemporaries to be a terrible 
portent. Charles I., trying to dispense with parlia- 



198 HOBBES [chap. 

ments, Cromwell ruling by armed force, Louis XIV. 
declaring himself to be the State, might be taken as 
avatars of the monster. Lovers of liberty of thought 
or action were shocked by a doctrine fit only for the 
graceless and abject courtiers of the Eestoration. The 
doctrine, however, must be considered on more general 
grounds. Hobbes, in the first place, is not here arguing 
for one form of government more than for another. 
He prefers monarchy : but his special point is that in 
every form, mpnarchfc, aristocratic, or democratic, there 
must be a " sovereign v — an ultimate, supreme, and 
single authority. Men, he says, admit the claim of a 
popular State to " absolute dominion," but object to 
the claim of a king, though he has the same power and 
is not more likely /for reasons given, to abuse it. The 
doctrine which he really opposes is that of a " mixed 
government." As ." some doctors " hold that jbhere are 
three souls in one man, others hold that there can be 
more souls than one in a commonwealth. That is 
virtually implied when they say that " the power of 
levying money, which is the nutritive faculty," depends 
on a " general assembly " ; the " power of conduct and 
command, which is the motive faculty, on one man ; and 
the power of making laws, which is the rational faculty, 
on the accidental consent, not only of those two last, but 
of a third " : this is called " mixed monarchy." " In 
truth it is not one independent commonwealth, but three 
independent factions ; nor one representative person 
but three. In the Kingdom of God there may be 
three persons independent without breach of unity in * 
God that reigneth ; but where men reign that be sub- 
ject to diversity of opinions, it cannot be so. And 
therefore if the king bear the person of the people, the 



iv.] THE STATE 199 

general assembly bear the person of the people, and 
another assembly bear the person of a part of the 
people, they are not one person, nor one sovereign, but 
three persons and three sovereigns." That is to say, 
the political, like the animal organism, is essentially 
, a unit. So far as there is not somewhere .a supreme 
\1 authority, there is anarchy or a possibility of anarchy. 
[\The application to Hobbes's own times is obvious. The 
king, for example, has a right to raise ship-money in 
case of necessity. But who has a right to decide the 
question of necessity ? If the king, he could raise 
taxes at pleasure. If the parliament, the king becomes 
only their pensioner. At the bottom it was a question 
of sovereignty, and Hobbes, holding the king to be 
sovereign,, holds that Hampden showed " an ignorant 
impatience' of taxation." " Mark the oppression ! A 
parliament man of £500 a year, land-taxed^ 20s." -Jj ~ i0^ % 
Hampden was refusing to contribute to his own de- 
fence. " All men are by nature provided of notable 
multiplying glasses, through which every little pay- 
ment appeareth a great grievance." Parliament re- 
monstrated against arbitrary imprisonment, the Star 
Chamber, and so forth; but it was their own fault 
that the king had so to act. Their refusal to give 
money "put him (the king) upon those extraordinary 
ways, which they call illegal, of raising money at home." 
The experience of the Civil War, he says in the 
Leviathan, has so plainly shown the mischief of dividing 
the rights of the sovereign that few men in England 
fail to see that they should be inseparable and should 
be so acknowledged " at the next return of peace." 

Men did in fact come to acknowledge it though not 
for some generations, and then by virtually transferring 



200 HOBBES [chap. 

sovereignty from the king to the parliament. A 
confused state of mind in the interval was implied in 
the doctrine which long prevailed, of the importance 
of a division between the legislative, executive, and 
judicial powers, and in the doctrine that the British 
Constitution represented a judicious mixture of the 
three elements, aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy, 
whose conflicts were regulated by an admirable 
system of checks and balances. Whatever truth may 
have been expressed in such theories, they were 
erroneous so far as inconsistent with Hobbes's doctrine. 
A division of the governmental functions is of course 
necessary, and different classes should be allowed to 
exercise an influence upon the State. But the division 
of functions must be consistent with the recognition of 
a single authority which can regulate and correlate 
their powers ; and a contest between classes, which 
do not in some way recognise a sovereign arbitrator, 
leads to civil war or revolution. Who is the sove- 
reign, for example, was the essential question which 
in the revolt of the American colonies, and in the 
secession of the Southern States, had to be answered 
by bullets. So long as that question is open, there is 
a condition of unstable equilibrium or latent anarchy. 
The State, as Hobbes puts it, should have only one 
soul, or as we may say, the political organism should 
have the unity corresponding to a vital principle. 

The unity of the Leviathan seemed to imply arbi- 
trary power. Since the king had the power of the 
sword, said Hobbes, he must also have the power of 
the purse. The logic might be good, but might be 
applied the other way. The true Englishman was 
determined not to pay the money till he knew how it 



iv.] THE STATE 201 

was to be spent ; and complained of a loss of liberty if 
it was taken by force. Hobbes's reply to this is very 
forcible and clears his position. He agreed with John- 
son that the cry for liberty was cant. What, he asks, 
in his De Give, is meant by liberty ? If an exemption 
from the laws, it can exist in no government whatever. 
If it consist in having few laws, and only those snch as 
are necessary to peace, there is no more liberty in a 
democracy than in a monarchy. What men really 
demand is not liberty but " dominion." People are 
deceived because in a democracy they have a greater 
share in public offices or in choosing the officers. It 
does not follow that they have more liberty in the 
sense of less law. Hobbes was putting his finger 
upon an ambiguity which has continued to flourish. 
Liberty may either mean that a man is not bound by 
law or that he is only bound by laws which he has 
made (or shared in making) himself. We are quite 
aware at the present day that a democracy may use 
the liberty, which in one sense it possesses, by making 
laws which are inconsistent with liberty in the other 
sense. 

The problem, so much discussed in our times, as 
to the proper limits of government interference had 
not then excited attention. Hobbes seems to incline 
towards non-interference. Subjects grow rich, he says, 
by " the fruits of the earth and water, labour and 
thrift" (land, labour, and capital), and the laws should 
encourage industry and forbid extravagance. The 
" impotent " should be supported and the able-bodied 
set to work; taxes should be equal, and laid upon con- 
sumption, which (as he thinks) will encourage saving, 
and extravagance should be punished. So far his 



202 HOBBES [chap. 

principles are those which his contemporaries fully 
accepted. But he adds emphatically that the laws 
should not go too far. "As water enclosed on all 
hands with banks, stands still and corrupts, so 
subjects, if they might do nothing without the 
command of the law, would grow dull and un- 
wieldy." They must not, however, be left too much 
to themselves. "Both extremes are faulty, for laws 
were not invented to take away but to direct men's 
actions, even as nature ordained the banks not to stay, 
but to guide the course of the stream ; it is therefore 
against sound policy that there should be more laws 
than necessarily serve for the good of the magistrate 
and his subjects." Laws, moreover, should be clear, 
simple, and directed not to revenge, but to correction. 
"Leaders of a commotion should be punished; not 
the poor seduced people. To be severe to the people, 
is to punish that ignorance which may in great part 
be imputed to the sovereign, whose fault it was that 
they were no better instructed." This is, perhaps, 
the only remark of Hobbes which would be endorsed 
by Tolstoi. Hobbes was in favour of a despotic rule ; 
but he was anxious that it should be thoroughly 
humane, and was fully sensible that the English laws 
were in great need of reform. 

Such questions, however, were then in the back- 
ground. The real issue with his contemporaries was 
different. Although his theory of sovereignty is 
avowedly independent of the particular form of govern- 
ment, he has a leaning to monarchy. He confesses 
that he has not proved this advantage demonstratively : 
"the one thing in the whole book," he adds, in regard 
to which he will make that modest admission. His 



iv.] THE STATE 203 

grounds are mainly that a king has a direct interest 
in promoting the welfare of his subjects, while popular 
leaders are prompted by vain glory and jealousy of 
each other, and popular assemblies are swayed by 
orators, for whom he always expresses contempt. " A 
democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators, 
interrupted sometimes with the temporary monarchy 
of one orator " : a Pym or a Gladstone. Hobbes's 
dislike to popular rule may be due in part to a certain 
intellectual difficulty. A sovereign must needs be a 
unit. But Hobbes is not comfortable with abstractions, 
or with so vague a body as the sovereign in a complex 
political system. He likes to have a king — a concrete, 
tangible individual in whom his principles may be 
incarnated. This prevents him from recognising one 
development of his theory which none the less was 
implied from the first. He perceives with perfect 
clearness and asserts in the most vigorous way that 
the division of sovereignty was the real weakness of the 
English system. His prejudices lead him to throw 
the whole blame upon the popular leaders. But a man 
of science should see that it is little to the purpose to 
blame individuals. Their discontent is a fact : a philo- 
sophical reformer should aim not at denouncing the 
symptoms, but at removing the causes of discord. It 
was clearly hopeless to persuade either side that it was 
in the wrong; but he might have tried to give an 
impartial diagnosis of the disease. He might then 
have admitted that the true solution might be, not 
to give the power of the purse to the king, but to give 
the power of the sword to the parliament. If he had 
contemplated that proposition, he might have foreseen 
(I do not mean that any human being could wholly 



204 HOBBES [chap. 

have foreseen) that his theory would apply to a 
radically changed order. 

In fact, Hobbes's Leviathan represents what is called 
" the modern State." Supremacy of the law, absolute 
authority of the governing power, and unity of the 
administrative system may be most fully realised when 
the " sovereign " is not an individual but an organic 
body. Government represents or "bears the person 
of the people," not in Hobbes's sense, that whatsoever 
the sovereign wills becomes their will, but in the inverse 
sense, that whatever they will becomes his will. Similar 
consequences follow in either version. Hobbes, for 
example, believes in the equality of man. It is one 
of his laws of nature that " every man acknowledge 
another for his equal by nature." Even if men were 
not equal, they would only make the compact on con- 
ditions of equality. Inequality of subjects, he says 
elsewhere, is made by the sovereign; and therefore 
all must be equal before the sovereign, as kings and 
subjects are equal before the King of Kings. Crimes 
of great men are " not extenuated but aggravated by 
the greatness of their persons." If they are favoured, 
" impunity maketh insolence ; insolence hatred ; and 
hatred an endeavour to pull down all oppressing and 
contumelious greatness, though with the ruin of the 
commonwealth." No subject can acquire any rights 
which will impede the full exercise of the sovereign 
power. The property of subjects in lands, for example, 
"consisteth in right to exclude all other subjects from 
the use of them, and not to exclude their sovereign, 
be it an assembly or a monarch." If land is not to be 
nationalised, the landowner's right is never absolute. 
So in all "systems subject — that is, in all associations 



iv.] THE STATE 205 

of any kind — no power can be enjoyed except what the 
sovereign chooses to allow." They nmst be thoroughly 
subordinate to his will, though in practice they have 
an awkward tendency to independence. Among the 
diseases of a commonwealth, Hobbes reckons great 
towns able to furnish an army (London, of course, is 
in his mind) " as w r ell as the great number of corpora- 
tions which are, as it were, many lesser commonwealths 
in the bowels of the greater, like worms in the entrails 
of a natural man." The principle is evidently fatal 
to privileged estates or corporations. The king or 
sovereign may call in councillors ; but they must 
remain councillors only. That, for example, is the 
case with the House of Commons. But the House of 
Lords has no better claim. " Good counsel comes not 
by inheritance." The claim of certain persons to have 
a place in the highest council by inheritance is derived 
" from the conquests of the ancient Germans." Their 
chiefs were able to extract privileges for their posterity. 
Such privileges, however, are inconsistent with sove- 
reign power, and if men contend for them as a right, 
they "must needs by degrees let them go," and be 
content with the honour due to their natural abilities. 
This consequence of the supremacy of the sovereign 
illustrates one curious contrast between Hobbes and 
his opponents. The parliamentary party had to defend 
privilege against prerogative ; and privilege has to be 
defended by precedent. The party, therefore, which 
would in modern phrase claim to be the " party of 
progress," justified itself by appealing to antiquity. 
When, indeed, you cut off a king's head you have to 
appeal to general principles. Constitutional precedents 
are not available. Milton had to claim indefeasible 



206 HOBBES [chap. 

rights for the people, and men like honest John Lil- 
burne used language which anticipated Fame's Rights 
of Man. But in the earlier stages of the quarrel, Coke's 
gigantic knowledge of old records, and superstitious 
reverence for the common law, that is, for tradition 
and custom, was a stronghold of the party. Hobbes 
rejects the whole doctrine. An absolute political 
theory could not fit into the constitutional tradition 
or justify the heterogeneous products of historical 
accidents. His treatise on the common law expresses 
his aversion to Coke. He had already quoted him in 
the Leviathan to show how men's judgments were 
" perverted by trusting to precedent." " If the man 
who first judged, judged unjustly, no injustice can be 
a pattern of justice to succeeding judges." No custom, 
again, can justify itself. If " use obtaineth the autho- 
rity of a law, it is not the length of time that maketh 
the authority, but the will of the sovereign signified 
by his silence." The tacit consent of a ruler may make 
a custom law. But " many unjust actions and unjust 
sentences go uncontrolled for a longer time than any 
man can remember." Only "reasonable" customs 
should be law, and evil customs should be abolished. 
The sovereign must decide what is reasonable and 
what should be abolished. 

According to Hobbes, then, all political machinery 
is absolutely subordinate^ to the sovereign. His power 
is the sole working force, and every resisting element 
must be ejected or brought under control. The law is 
the expression of his will, and though he may enforce 
rules which have grown up independently, they can 
only exist on sufferance or by his tacit consent. In 
J that respect Hobbes was at one with the most thorough- 



iv.] THE STATE 207 

going revolutionists who ever proposed to rearrange 
the political order upon an ideal plan, and to abolish 
all traditional law which is not in conformity with the 
dictates of reason. As a matter of fact, Hobbes's 
legal doctrine came to life again in the hands of 
Bentham and his follower, Austin, the legal lights of 
the "philosophical radicals." Maine observes that 
they had scarcely anything to add to Hobbes's analysis 
of the meaning of law. Hobbes puts his theory with 
all possible clearness in the De Owe and the Leviathan, 
" A law is a command of that person, whose precept 
contains in it the reason of obedience." The " civil 
law " is the command of the sovereign. We are bound 
to obey it, because it is his command, as soon as we 
know it to be his. It must therefore be promulgated 
in order that we may know it, and have a " penalty 
annexed to it" in order that we may obey it; for 
"vain is that law which may be broken without 
punishment." When we are solemnly informed that 
a law is a command of the sovereign, enforced by a 
" sanction," the impulse of the unregenerate mind is 
to reply, " that is what I always supposed." Parlia- 
ment and the policeman are phenomena too obvious to 
be overlooked ; the great manufactory which is always 
turning out laws, and the rod which will smite us if 
we do not obey are always with us. What else 
should a law be than a rule made by one and enforced 
by the other ? We are told in reply that great con- 
fusion has arisen by confounding such laws with " Laws 
of Nature," laws which are supposed to exist in some 
transcendental world, and yet to supply the necessary 
basis for the laws of actual life, and which have to be 
applied to life by the help of such shifty and ambigu- 



208 HOBBES [chap. 

ous hypotheses as the social contract. I do not doubt 
that that is true, but it suggests one question. Austin 
and his disciples were always exposing the absurdity 
of the Law of Nature and the social contract, and yet 
their own doctrine coincides with that of Hobbes, who 
professes to make these theories an integral part of 
his system. 

The explanation is simple, and gives the essence 
of Hobbes. According to Hobbes, in fact, the 
Law of Nature has a singularly limited sphere of 
action. It only exists, one may say, in order to repeal 
itself. Before the social contract, he says, every man 
has a right to everything, which is practically equiva- 
lent to nobody having a right to anything ; for if the 
same thing belongs to two men, neither has a right 
against the other. But the contract is itself made by 
every man resigning all his rights to the sovereign. 
When he has thus made them over, he can no longer 
make any claims under the Law of Nature. The 
sovereign may command him to do anything (except, 
indeed, to help to hang himself) and he is bound to 
obey. The Law of Nature orders him to obey the 
positive law, and does nothing else. This comes, 
however, of being thoroughly logical, after making 
one initial error. The Law of Nature is simply the 
law of self-preservation, and whatever necessarily 
follows from it. But in what sense of "law" can 
we call self-preservation a law? In one sense it is 
what Hobbes calls a "theorem," not a law. It is 
(assuming its truth) a statement of fact. All men 
do aim at self-preservation. That is their one actual 
and, indeed, their one possible principle. If so, it 
cannot be a "law" at all in the ethical or strictly 



I 



iv.] THE STATE 209 

legal sense. It expresses an essential condition of 
man's nature, and not a law imposed upon him from 
without. Men act for their own preservation as stones 
fall by gravitation. It is a way they have, and they 
cannot have any other. Taking for granted the truth 
of the "theorem/' it will enable us to show how 
political institutions and " civil laws " have come into 
existence, but it does not show that they are right 
or wrong. It is as irrelevant to introduce that con- 
fusion as it would be to say that the angles of a 
triangle ought to be equal to two right angles. 
Hobbes's real theory comes out when we drop the 
imaginary contract altogether. We assume "self- 
preservation" as the universal instinct and, moreover, 
we must provisionally accept Hobbes's thoroughgoing 
egoism. Then so long as there is no common 
superior, the instinct produces competition and war, 
and implies the nasty, brutish " state of nature." 
How do men get out of it ? Historically, he replies, 
governments may be made by conquest or developed 
out of the family, " which is a little monarchy." In 
both cases sovereignty is acquired by " force " and the 
subjects submit from fear. Governments, also, are 
made by " institution," that is, by the social contract ; 
and in this case the motive is still fear, but fear of one 
another. Admitting, then, that even as an historical 
fact, sovereignty has been made by "institution" or 
contract, the essential motive is still the same. Each 
man sees that he will be better off, or preserve his life 
and means of living better if he and his will obey a 
sovereign than if they remain masterless. The hypo- 
thesis that States were deliberately contrived and made 
by a bargain between the separate atoms is, of course, 



210 HOBBES [chap. 

absurd historically, but is also irrelevant to Hobbes. 
The essential point is simply that settled order is so 
much more favourable to self-preservation than anarchy 
that every one has a sufficient interest in maintaining 
it. Peace, as he tells us, means all the arts and 
sciences that distinguish Europeans from Choctaws. 
The original contractors can scarcely be supposed to 
have foreseen that. But at least it gives a very good 
reason for obedience. 

This comes out curiously in Hobbes's " exceptions " 
to the obligation of the contract. Men are not bound 
to kill themselves because the tacit " consideration " 
for accepting the contract was the preservation of life 
and the means of life. He was logically bound to go 
further. If upon that ground they may repudiate the 
contract, they may break it whenever the end is frus- 
trated, that is, whenever by keeping it they will be in 
a worse position. Moreover, since nobody ever acts, 
except for his own good, they certainly will break it 
whether it is binding or not. In other words, the 
supposed contract is merely another version of the 
first principle of egoism : a man will always do what 
seems to be for his own interest. By calling it a 
contract he gets the appearance of extending the 
obligation to a wider sphere — to cases, that is, in 
w^hich a man's interest is opposed to his contract. But 
it is only an appearance. It is indeed true that when 
a sovereign has once been set up, fraud and force cease 
to pay, as a general rule, and honesty becomes the 
best policy. But that is more simply expressed with- 
out reference to a contract. It merely means that the 
most selfish of mankind finds that it is worth while to 
have a policeman round the corner. Indeed the more 



iv.] THE STATE 211 

selfish he is the greater may be the convenience. By 
abandoning my supposed right to all things, I get an 
effectual right to most things ; and that may be called 
a bargain, but it is a bargain which I shall only keep, 
and indeed can only keep, according to Hobbes, so 
long as the balance of profit is on my side. That is, 
it is not a bargain at all. 

The facts, however, remain, and Hobbes manages to 
state a clear and coherent scheme. His position may 
be compared to that of the old economists. They used 
to maintain that in taking for granted the selfishness 
of mankind they were making a legitimate abstraction. 
Men, it is true, are not simply selfish, they have other 
motives than a love of money ; but the love of money 
is so prominent an instinct in economic masses that we 
may consider it as the sole force at work, and so we 
may get a theory which will be approximately true, 
though requiring correction when applied to concrete 
cases. Hobbes virtually considers the political system 
in so far as it is based upon selfish motives and is 
worked by individual interests. No doubt such mo- 
tives are tolerably prevalent. The obvious and most 
assignable motive for obeying the law is fear of the 
hangman; and all manner of selfish interests are 
furthered by maintaining a settled system of govern- 
ment. He thus obtains a clear conception of one 
important aspect of the political order. It means or- 
ganised force. The State is held together by armies 
which protect us from invasion, and by the admini- 
strative system which preserves order at home. These 
are undeniable facts which it is as well to recognise 
clearly, and which are most vigorously set forth in 
Hobbes's Leviathan. 



212 HOBBES [chap. 

Certain limits to the value of his theory are equally 
plain. In the Leviathan Hobbes says that the " public 
ministers " are parts organical of the commonwealth, 
and compares the judges to the " organs of voice/' the 
executive to the hands, ambassadors to eyes, and so 
forth. The analogy between the political and the indi- 
vidual organism is implied in the whole theory. But 
the Leviathan is an " artificial " body, and " artificial " 
means mechanical construction. The individual is the 
ultimate unit, and though he resigns his rights to the 
sovereign, it is always for his own personal advantage. 
The comparison to a body suggests the modern phrase 
"the social organism," but the "artificial" indicates 
that Hobbes does not really interpret the Leviathan as 
an organism. It is a big machine or set of atoms held 
together by external bonds. Hobbes's egoism forces 
him to the doctrine that the particles gravitate to- 
gether simply from fear — fear of the magistrate or fear 
of your neighbour. Sympathy is ignored, and such 
sentiments as patriotism or public spirit or philan- 
thropy are superficial modifications of selfishness, 
implying a readiness to adopt certain precautions for 
securing our own lives and properties. This involves 
a one-sided view of the conditions of social and political 
welfare. It may be fully admitted that organised force 
is essential to a civilised society, that it cannot exist 
or develop without its military and judicial bodies, its 
soldiers and its judges, its hangmen, gaolers, and police- 
men, its whole protective apparatus. An animal cannot 
live without its teeth and claws. What is overlooked 
is the truth that other parts of the system are equally 
essential, and that there is a reciprocal dependence 
indicated by the word "organic." Society is held 



iv.] THE STATE 213 

together not simply by the legal sanctions, but by all 
the countless instincts and sympathies which bind men 
together, and by the spontaneous associations which 
have their sources outside of the political order. It 
may be granted to Hobbes that peace is an essential 
condition of progress, and that the sovereign must be 
created to keep the peace. It is equally true that the 
sovereign derives his power from other sources than 
mutual " fear " or dread of the " legal sanctions." 
Society could not get on without the policeman ; but 
the policeman could not keep order by the simple force 
of his truncheon. Force must be "organised," but it 
cannot be organised out of simple egoism and fear. 
So when Hobbes defines law as the command of the 
sovereign, he is stating what in a fully developed State 
is an undeniable fact. The law is the system of rules 
promulgated and enforced by the sovereign power in 
spite of any conflicting customs. Historically speak- 
ing, laws are not the less the product of customs which 
have grown up spontaneously ; they are the causes, not 
the effects of the sovereign's authority ; and in the 
last resort the sovereign power must still rest upon 
custom ; that is, upon all the complex motives from 
which arises loyalty to the State, and upon which its 
vitality depends. 

Hobbes's position was indeed inevitable. The con- 
ception of sociology as a science, in which the political 
order is regarded as only part of the whole social 
system, had not yet arisen. That could not happen 
until historical methods of inquiry had begun to show 
their power, and the necessity of treating political 
questions in connection with the intellectual or the 
industrial evolution began to be perceived. The 



214 HOBBES [chap. 

" social contract " theory helped Hobbes to pass over in 
summary fashion the great historical problems as to the 
way in which the State has actually been developed ; 
and therefore the State itself could be regarded as 
held together by the purely political and legal forces. 
When he had deduced the sovereign power from the 
principle of self-preservation, he seemed to himself to 
have explained everything. He had got to the one 
force which held the units together, as gravitation 
holds together the solar system. The relation between 
subject and sovereign is the one bond from which all 
others may be deduced. The thoroughgoing accept- 
ance of this assumption leads to some of the singular 
results by which he startled his contemporaries, 
though he announces them with superlative calmness 
as demonstrated truths. 

There are, as he has to admit, two sets of laws 
which may occasionally conflict with the laws of 
the State. In the first place, there is the moral law. 
Hobbes was perfectly well aware that a king might be 
a fool or a brute. It seemed to follow that laws might 
be contrary to the dictates of morality. His opponents 
could point out to him that some of the Roman em- 
perors had been far from model characters. Besides 
their other weaknesses, they had occasionally thought 
it right to give Christians to lions. Again, the Chris- 
tian Church claimed obedience, and Hobbes was an 
orthodox Christian. What is the subject to do if his 
sovereign orders him to break the moral law or to 
deny the truth of religion? 

4. The Moral Law 
Hobbes does not shrink from the logical result 



iv.] THE STATE 215 

of his principles. The moral law, he holds, is the 
Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, as we have 
seen, means essentially the law of self-preserva- 
tion, and from that is deduced the " virtue " of 
justice, from which all other laws of nature are 
corollaries. Justice means keeping covenants, which 
becomes operative when a " coercive power " is consti- 
tuted ; that is, at the institution of the social contract. 
This contract therefore is at the base of ail moral as 
well as of all political relations. It is presupposed in 
all particular contracts. Justice, the cardinal or rather 
the sole virtue, means keeping covenants, but also 
keeping the primitive contract to which all others owe 
their binding force. It implies, therefore, unconditional 
obedience to the sovereign who is the social contract 
incarnate. The sovereign cannot be unjust to a sub- 
ject ; for every subject is himself author of all that the 
sovereign does. Laws are the "rules of just and 
unjust ; nothing being reputed unjust that is not con- 
trary to some law." "The Law of Nature and the 
civil law contain each other and are of equal extent." 
"Justice, gratitude, and other moral virtues" are 
merely "qualities that dispose men to peace and 
obedience" until the commonwealth is instituted. 
Then they become laws, " for it is the sovereign power 
that obliges men to obey them." Thus the Law of 
Nature is part of the civil law, and " reciprocally the 
civil law is part of the dictates of nature." 

Nobody, I believe, ever followed Hobbes in this 
audacious identification of law and morality. I must 
try to make some apology for a most estimable old 
gentleman misled by an excessive passion for logic. 
In the first place, it may be held that, whatever be the 



216 HOBBES [chap. 

ultimate meaning of morality, the actual morality of a 
race is evolved in constant correlation with its social 
organisation. Hobbes, who substituted the social con- 
tract for this process, and regarded sovereignty as 
the sole bond of union, could only approximate to this 
doctrine by making moral obligations a product of the 
sovereign will. It would be outrageous, no doubt, to 
suppose that a sovereign could make the moral law at 
his pleasure, so that lying might become a virtue or 
gratitude a vice if the lawgiver chose to alter the law. 
That is not Hobbes's meaning. Honesty, gratitude, and 
the like are, we see, useful qualities and parts of the 
Law of Nature as tending to self-preservation. The 
sovereign of course cannot alter that fact. What he 
can do is to make them obligatory by establishing the 
state of security which makes their exercise possible or 
prudent for the individual. In the " state of nature " 
the conduct would be self-destructive which, when the 
commonwealth is formed, becomes self-preservative. 
But, we may ask, will the power thus constituted aim 
at the end for which it was instituted ? May not the 
sovereign do wrong ? May he not be a brutal tyrant, 
or lay down laws which are immoral, because incon- 
sistent with the welfare of the people ? Is it in that 
case our duty to obey them ? Must we submit to 
oppression or enslave our neighbours because the 
sovereign, whether king or parliament, commands it ? 
Hobbes admits the possibility. " They that have the 
sovereign power may commit iniquity, but not injustice 
or injury in the proper signification." That is, the 
sovereign's immorality gives no right to the subject to 
disobey or even to protest. The reason is that the 
only alternative is anarchy. Bad laws are better than 



iv.] THE STATE 217 

no laws. " Good," as we have seen, means what a man 
desires and evil what he eschews. " One counts that 
good which another counts evil ; and the same man what 
now he esteemed for good, he immediately after looks 
on as evil ; and the same thing which he calls good in 
himself he terms evil in another." There is no such 
thing as absolute good. Hence it is impossible to 
make a common rule from the tastes of " particular " 
men. We have to consider what is reasonable ; but 
"there are no other reasons in being but those of par- 
ticular men and that of the city ; it follows that the 
city is to determine what with reason is culpable." 
We are bound to obey the laws before we know what 
the laws are; for the State must precede the law. 
Therefore "no civil law whatever can be against the 
Law of Nature." The Law of Nature may forbid theft 
and adultery ; but till we have civil laws we do not 
know what theft and adultery are. When the Spar- 
tans permitted their youth to take other men's goods, 
the taking was not theft. In other words, all law 
becomes positive law, for the Law of Nature only 
orders us to obey the law of the sovereign. It has 
been said that "whatsoever a man does against his 
conscience is sin." That is true in the "state of 
nature," where a man has no rule but his own reason. 
" It is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth, 
because the law is the public conscience by which he 
hath already undertaken to be guided." Otherwise 
nobody would obey further than it seemed good in his 
own eyes. 

The subject, then, hands over the whole responsi- 
bility to the sovereign. Then " it is in the laws of a 
commonwealth as it is in the laws of gaming; whatso- 



218 HOBBES [chap. 

ever the gamesters all agree on is injustice to none of 
them." Are then the laws as arbitrary as the laws of 
a game ? To that Hobbes has his answer : " The safety 
of the people is the supreme law." The sovereign is 
" obliged by the Law of Nature " to procure this end, 
" and to render an account thereof to God and to none 
but Him." Remembering the peculiarity of Hobbes' s 
theology, it may seem that this responsibility is per- 
haps illusory. It is more to his purpose that, as he 
puts it, " the good of the sovereign and people cannot 
be separated." " It is a weak sovereign that has weak 
subjects, and a weak people whose sovereign wanteth 
power to rule them at his will." It is clearly to the 
interest of the sovereign, as it is also his duty, to main- 
tain order. But to maintain order is, according to 
Hobbes, to enforce morality. The sovereign has to 
instruct his people in the " fundamental rights " of his 
office. To do so is " not only his duty, but his benefit 
also, and security against the danger that may arise to 
himself in his natural person from rebellion." He pro- 
ceeds in his quaint fashion to point out that this duty 
of instructing the people is the duty of impressing 
upon them the Ten Commandments. Since kings are 
mortal gods, the commandments of the first table are 
applicable to them as well as to the Supreme Being. 
Clearly a man who proves that kings not only should 
but naturally will adopt the Ten Commandments is 
preaching a sound morality. 

It is necessary, however, to remember Hobbes' s 
general ethical conception. Every man acts simply 
for his own good. Every man, again, interprets 
" good " as that which pleases him. Order can only be 
established when every man sees that he will get more 



iv.] THE STATE 219 

good for himself by submitting to a common authority. 
When that is securely established, the individual will 
be repaid for sacrificing that right to everything 
which he could not enforce. But when that is done, 
the moral law is made supreme. For morality, accord- 
ing to Hobbes, is summed up in justice ; that is, in 
observing the general contract according to which the 
distribution of good things is regulated and men are 
obliged to keep their particular contracts. Equality 
before the law and equality of taxation are also implied, 
for inequality leads to discontent. But in other 
respects every man may, and of course will be guided 
by his own conceptions of "good." As I have said 
before, Hobbes is not in favour of extending the 
sphere of legislation. Laws are "like hedges," set 
" not to stop travellers but to keep them in their way. 
And therefore a law which is not needful, having not 
the true end of law, is not good." "Unnecessary 
laws are not good laws, but traps for money ; which, 
where the right of sovereign power is acknowledged, 
are superfluous ; and where it is not acknowledged, 
insufficient to defend the people." 

This, it seems, is the essential meaning of Hobbes's 
identification of law and morality. They are, accord- 
ing to him, different aspects of the virtue which he 
calls justice. That means that a man acts morally so 
far as he pursues his own ends without harming his 
neighbour ; and legally, so far as he obeys the sove- 
reign w r ho enforces the security without which it is 
not a man's interest to act morally. No doubt this is 
a totally inadequate view of morality. It is the legal 
or purely external conception which supposes that the 
moral, like the positive law, is satisfied by obeying 



220 HOBBES [chap. 

certain " sanctions " which, make bad conduct unprofit- 
able. But it does not imply that the moral law is 
"arbitrary" or made at will by the sovereign. It is 
the law of " self-preservation " regarded from a purely 
egoistic point of view. 

5. The Spiritual Power 

Hobbes's theory may lead to some pretty problems 
in casuistry. How far should a man's duty to the 
state override the dictates of his conscience ? May a 
soldier refuse to serve in a war that he thinks unjust ? 
Or a Quaker refuse to fight at all ? May a man refuse 
to pay taxes if he disapproves of the purpose for 
which they are raised ? To admit such liberty un- 
reservedly is to approve of anarchy, and upon that 
ground some people become anarchists. The problem, 
however, does not often present itself in practice. 
Most laws are sufficiently in conformity with the 
average morality of the people to excite no protest. 
But another question was far more pressing, and to 
Hobbes seemed to be the really critical question of 
the day. What is to be done when the subject's 
religious convictions clash with his obligations to the 
State ? To that problem Hobbes gave an answer in 
his first treatise, which was expanded in the De Give, 
and given at great length and with many singular 
developments in the Leviathan. 

His essential position is simple enough : the sove- 
reign has to keep the peace. Now men's "actions 
proceed from their opinions," and therefore opinions 
must be governed in order to govern action, and 
governed in the interests of peace. He agrees 



iv.] THE STATE 221 

that in speculation " nothing ought to be regarded 
but the truth." True opinion, however, cannot be 
"repugnant to peace." "Yet the most sudden and 
rough bursting in of a new truth, that can be, does 
never break the peace but only sometimes awake the 
war ; " that is, where error is already prevalent 
and people are ready to fight for it. It follows that 
the suppression of an opinion " repugnant to peace," 
must also be the suppression of error. He limits the 
suppression, how r ever, to the public teaching, through 
books or otherwise, of objectionable opinions, for he 
also holds that a man's private beliefs cannot be deter- 
mined by force. The sovereign is therefore bound 
to forbid the open propagation of opinions by which 
his authority is subverted. The diseases which bring 
about the " dissolution of commonwealths " are seditious 
opinions. Besides the opinion that every private man 
is to judge of good and evil, there is the opinion 
that a man may claim supernatural inspiration: a 
pernicious doctrine which in this part of the world 
has been turned to account by "unlearned divines," 
sufficiently prevalent in the fanatical sects of the 
commonwealth. 

But a still more vital power is represented by the 
claims of the papacy. This, in fact, means the cardinal 
error of a divided sovereignty. It is a setting up of 
"supremacy against sovereignty; canons against laws, 
and a ghostly authority against the civil." " Now see- 
ing it is manifest that the civil power and the power 
of the commonwealth is the same thing, and that 
supremacy and the power of making canons . . . im- 
plieth a commonwealth, it followeth that where one 
is sovereign, another supreme — where one can make 



222 HOBBES [chap. 

laws and another make canons — there must needs be 
two commonwealths of one and the same subjects, 
which is a kingdom divided against itself and cannot 
stand." The " ghostly power challengeth the right 
to declare what is sin," and therefore the right to 
declare what is law, for sin is " nothing but the trans- 
gression of the law." As the civil power also declares 
what is law, it follows either that every subject must 
obey two masters, or that one of the two powers 
must be subordinate to the other. The civil authority 
has the advantage of being " more visible " ; but the 
spiritual, though it deals in unintelligible doctrines, 
yet, "because the fear of darkness and ghosts is 
greater than other fears, cannot want a party sufficient 
to trouble and sometimes to destroy a commonwealth." 
The spiritual power, indeed, has an advantage, "for 
every man" (as he says in the De Give), "if he be 
in his wits, will in all things yield that man an 
absolute obedience, by virtue of whose sentence he 
believes himself to be either saved or damned." 
Church or State, that is, must be supreme, or there 
will be a fatal disease which he quaintly compares to 
the epilepsy, a " wind in the head," which makes men 
fall into fire or water. When the spiritual power 
moves the subject "by the terror of punishment and 
hope of reward" of this supernatural kind, "and by 
strange and hard words suffocates their understanding, 
it must needs thereby distract the people, and either 
overwhelm the commonwealth by oppression or cast it 
into the fire of a civil war." Which then is to be 
supreme ? A church, like a state, must be an organised 
body and have a sovereign before it can be said to 
"will" or "command." He defines it therefore as a 



iv.] THE STATE 223 

" company of men professing Christian religion united 
in the person of one sovereign, at whose command 
they ought to assemble, and without whose authority 
they ought not to assemble." Now, in all common- 
wealths, an assembly in order to be lawful must have 
the warrant of the civil sovereign. There is no power 
on earth to which all commonwealths are subject, and 
the Christians in each State are subject to its sovereign 
and cannot be subject to any other power. Therefore 
a church is the same thing with the civil common- 
wealth, which is " called a civil state, for that the 
subjects of it are men, and a church for that the 
subjects thereof are Christians." "Temporal" and 
"spiritual" are "two words brought into the world 
to make men see double and mistake their lawful 
sovereign." Unless there is one governor there will 
be civil war between Church and State — "between 
the sword of justice and the shield of faith — and, which 
is more, in every Christian man's own breast between 
the Christian and the man." 

The Church, in short, as a law-making or governing 
body must be fused with the State. Otherwise we 
have the fatal splitting of sovereignty. An antagonist 
might have replied that the unity might be equally 
secured by subordinating the State to the Church. 
An absolute theocracy, such as corresponded to the 
extremest claims of the papacy, would have satisfied 
the condition as fully as the secular sovereignty. To 
this Hobbes replies upon the historical ground. He 
denies that the Church of Rome, or indeed that the 
spiritual power from the beginning of the world, can 
make out any title to the sovereign power. Half of 
the Leviathan, namely the third part (" Of a Christian 



224 HOBBES [chap. 

Commonwealth ") and the f onrth (" Of the Kingdom 
of Darkness "), is devoted to this argument. 

It is a most singular performance. Hobbes has to 
argue from the Bible, and quotes texts as confidently 
as any contemporary divine. He protests, indeed, 
with an air of perfect candour, that he has only taken 
the plainest sense and that which is " agreeable to the 
harmony and scope of the whole Bible." But his 
exegesis brings out results which nobody before or 
since has ever deduced from the same authority. We 
may wonder whether he is sincere or laughing in 
his sleeve; whether, perhaps, he means simply an 
argument ad hominem; or a tacit suggestion that any 
conclusions you please can be extorted from the 
documents whose authority he is bound to admit. 
Our confidence is not increased by his apology for his 
paradoxes. He admits that one doctrine, which he 
proves, will appear to most men a novelty.* " I do but 
propound it," he says, u maintaining nothing in this or 
any other paradox of religion, but attending the end 
of that dispute of the sword concerning the authority, 
not yet amongst my countrymen decided, by which all 
sorts of doctrine are to be approved or rejected." 
Anyhow the results are too grotesque to be given at 
length, or to be quite passed over. 

His contention is essentially that there never was 
a divinely instituted spiritual authority independent 
of the civil authority. The civil and ecclesiastical 
power, for example, were united in Abraham, after- 
wards in Moses, and then in the high priests. " Who- 
ever had the sovereignty of the commonwealth among 
the Jews, the same had also the supreme authority in 
the matter of God's external worship," though the 



iv.] THE STATE 225 

Jews got into many calamities from not properly 
understanding the rights of their rulers. The old 
dispensation, it might be supposed, was superseded 
by the Christian Church, and its rulers would repre- 
sent Christ on earth. But " the Kingdom of Christ " 
was not of this world. That, according to Hobbes, 
means that it will not be established until a new 
world begins upon " the general resurrection." Then 
Christ will become a King in the literal sense. The 
good will come to life in their old bodies (for there 
is no such thing as a separate soul) and live eternally. 
They will not marry or be given in marriage, for 
otherwise the earth would obviously not be big enough 
to hold the resulting population. There will be no 
death vacancies. The wicked will also come to life 
in order to receive condign punishment. They will 
suffer " the second death," which cannot, as he thinks, 
mean- eternal life in torture, but simple extinction. 
As they will die, they may propagate ; and therefore 
hell may be eternal in the sense that there will always 
be a supply of the wicked to be punished, though 
every individual will come to an end. This amazing 
theory is meant to show that since Christ's kingdom 
is not to become a reality until the resurrection, the 
Church is, for the time being, not a kingdom at all 
but a mere voluntary association. The apostles and 
their successors could only persuade, not command, 
and had no coercive powers. Excommunication 
could only mean amicable separation, not the in- 
fliction of a penalty. The Church did not acquire 
legal authority until it was invested with power by 
the emperor. 

These queer speculations are connected with a more 

Q 



226 HOBBES [chap. 

interesting set of arguments. Hobbes wishes to meet 
the claims of the Church to supernatural authority. 
He cannot deny — explicitly at any rate — that Moses 
and the prophets were divinely inspired. What he can 
do is to argue that their inspiration does not transmit 
supernatural authority to their descendants. Moses 
himself knew that he was speaking to Jehovah. But 
in what way Jehovah spoke to him is " not intelligible." 
The Jews could only know that Moses told them that 
he was so speaking, and that makes a vital difference. 
When a prophet says that God has spoken to him in 
a dream, that is only to say he " dreamed that God 
spoke to him, which is not of force to win belief from 
any man that knows that dreams are for the most 
part natural." To say that a man speaks by " super- 
natural inspiration is to say he finds an ardent desire 
to speak in some strong opinion of himself, for which 
he can allege no natural and sufficient reason. So that, 
though God Almighty can speak to a man by dreams, 
visions, voice, and inspiration, yet he obliges no man 
to believe he hath so done to him that pretends it, 
who, being a man, may err, and which is more, may 
lie." As miracles have ceased, we can now only appeal 
to the Holy Scriptures. What, then, is the authority 
of the Scriptures ? Hobbes goes through many of the 
passages, which have been mentioned by later critics, 
to show that the books ascribed to Moses and others 
were written after the time of the supposed authors. 
The Psalter must have been put into its present form 
after the captivity as some of the psalms refer to it. 
The authority, of the Old Testament in general can 
only be traced to the time of Esdras, who discovered 
the books when they were lost; and the canon of 



iv.] THE STATE 227 

the New Testament cannot be proved to have been 
authoritative before the Council of Laodicea in the 
year 364 a.d. Hobbes, indeed, believes that the New 
Testament books are genuine, for a characteristic 
reason: The doctors of the Church had claimed 
supreme power by the time of the Council and 
thought pious frauds commendable. If they had 
altered the books " they would surely have made 
them more favourable to their power over Christian 
princes . . . than they are." Why, then, do we believe 
the Scriptures to be the Word of God ? Everybody, 
he says, admits the fact of inspiration, but no one 
can know it except "those to whom God him- 
self hath revealed it supernaturally." Men believe, 
though they do not know, for reasons so various 
that no general account of them can be given. But 
" the question truly stated is, by what authority they 
(the Scriptures) are made law." The answer is 
obvious. They must be imposed by a sovereign 
authority ; and, if so, either by sovereigns each 
absolute in his own territory, or by the " Vicar of 
Christ " as sovereign of the universal Church, who 
must then have the power of judging, deposing, or 
putting to death the subordinate sovereigns. Mean- 
while, every man is " bound to make use of his 
natural reason " to test the claims of a prophet. It 
is clear that a great many prophets are not to 
be trusted. When Ahab consulted four hundred 
prophets, all but one were impostors, " and a little 
before the time of the captivity the prophets were 
generally liars (see Jeremiah xiv. 14)." We must- 
judge them then by their conformity to the estab- 
lished authority. When Christians do not take their 



228 HOBBES [chap. 

own sovereign for God's prophet, they must take 
their own dreams or obey " some strange prince/' or 
be bewitched into rebellion and the " chaos of violence 
and civil war" by some fellbw-subject. 

Hobbes proceeds to treat of miracles. We take 
an event to be miraculous when we do not perceive 
its cause. The first rainbow " was a miracle because 
the first/' and consequently strange. A rainbow is 
not a miracle now, because it is no longer strange, 
even to those who do not know the cause. That 
may be a miracle to one man which is not so to 
another. Before astronomy became a science, a man 
who predicted an eclipse would pass for a prophet. 
Juggling, ventriloquism, and thaumaturgy are com- 
mon, and "there is nothing how impossible soever to 
be done that is impossible to be believed." When we 
hear of a miracle, we must therefore consult the 
lawful head of the Church how far we are to give 
credit to the story. " A private man has always 
the liberty, because thought is free, to believe or 
not believe in his heart those acts that have been 
given out for miracles," and he should consider who 
is likely to profit by them. "But when it comes 
to the confession of that faith, the private reason 
must submit to the public, that is to say, to God's 
lieutenant." 

Hobbes was thus suggesting doubts as to the 
evidences of the established creeds, doubts which 
were to bear fruit in a later generation. Spinoza, 
in the Tractatits TJieologico-Politicus, treated the ques- 
tions on wider grounds and "went a bar" beyond 
what Hobbes has dared to say. No active con- 
troversy, however, arose till a later period. Hobbes's 



iv.] THE STATE 229 

argument, we may notice, has a resemblance to 
that which Hume made famous. Both of them 
argue, not that miracles are impossible, but that the 
proof of a miracle is always insufficient. Hobbes 
has to assert that the events recorded in the Scrip- 
tures really happened, but endeavours to show that 
there is no proof that they happened. We must 
believe on authority, and, moreover, on the authority 
of the Church. Only by authority Ave do not mean 
the intellectual authority of competent inquirers, but 
the legal authority of the sovereign. Rather, we may 
believe what we like, but we may only profess the 
belief which the law allows us to profess. 

We have still to see why he rejects the alternative 
of the supremacy of the Church. The existing com- 
monwealths are independent of each other, and there- 
fore not subject in fact to any central authority; but 
it may still be urged that they ought to be subject to 
this. To this he replies partly by the familiar Pro- 
testant arguments from texts, and maintains that 
Bellarmine's interpretations of "feed my sheep," and 
so forth, are erroneous. But the main answer is given 
in the last book upon " The Kingdom of Darkness." 
There he takes up the position which was already 
assumed in his account of the natural history of re- 
ligion. The gods of the heathen are, as we have 
seen, mere " phantasms " — dreams mistaken for reality 
and so forth. The Church of Rome adopted the same 
methods. By misinterpreting Scripture the priests 
made people believe in devils and exorcism, in 
purgatory and the efficiency of sacraments, and other 
doctrines calculated to increase their power and give 
them authority over the secular rulers. They adopted 



230 HOBBES [chap. 

many ceremonies and superstitions from the Gentiles, 
and they introduced the vain and erroneous philosophy 
of Aristotle to perplex men's minds. The argument 
ends by a quaint comparison between the papacy and 
the " kingdom of fairies." The whole " hierarchy " has 
been built up like the " old wives' fables in England 
concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play 
in the night." It is needless to go into the details ; 
but I may quote the striking phrase which sums up his 
theory. " If a man consider the original of this great 
ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that 
the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased 
Eoman empire sitting crowned upon the grave 
thereof." " The Koman Church," says a great living 
authority, " in this way privily pushed itself into the 
place of the Roman world-empire of which it is the 
historical continuation." * A comparison of the phrases 
may illustrate Hobbes's vigorous grasp of thought as 
well as command of words. 

His ascription of sovereignty in religious matters to 
the civil authority was startling enough and led him 
into some difficulties. What, for example, are we to 
say of the Christian martyrs ? They were clearly 
rebels and yet have been generally praised for their 
conduct. Hobbes has to " distinguish." To be a true 
martyr, a man must have "received a calling to 
preach." He must, moreover, have seen the facts to 
which he testifies. " If he testifies to the resurrection, 
he must have conversed with Christ before his death 
and seen him after he was risen. Otherwise he can 
only be a " martyr " (that is, a witness) to other men's 

1 Harnack's What is Christianity ? p. 252. 



rr.] THE STATE 231 

testimony. Moreover, there is only one article for 
which a man ought to die, namely, that " Jesus is the 
Christ." We are not to die for every private tenet of 
our own or for tenets which suit the clergy. Naaman 
set a very convenient precedent, and if, like him, we 
obey our sovereign in using words which do not express 
our thoughts, the action is not ours but our sovereign's. 
To resist an infidel sovereign is to " sin against the 
laws of God (for such are the laws of nature) and the 
counsel of the apostles " (i.e. to obey princes). If we 
do not take Naaman's view, we must expect our 
reward in heaven. "But," he asks, "what infidel 
king is so unreasonable as, knowing he has a subject 
that waiteth for the second coming of Christ after the 
present world shall be burnt, and intendeth then to 
obey him (which is the intent of believing that Jesus is 
the Christ), and in the meantime thinketh himself 
bound to obey the laws of that infidel king (which all 
Christians are obliged in conscience to do), to put to 
death or persecute such a subject?" Certainly if all 
that is meant by belief in Christ is an intention of 
obeying him as a king after the general resurrection, 
the infidel king would be very unreasonable. They 
sometimes are. 

Hobbes sums up his belief in one phrase. "Ke- 
ligion," he says in dedicating his Seven Problems to 
Charles II., " is not philosophy but law." We have 
already seen what is the view which he takes in his 
natural history of religion. Religion is the " fear of 
power invisible." That is the essential meaning of the 
instinct, and legislators have taken advantage of it to 
strengthen their own authority and to keep the peace. 
Whether the objects of worship be real or " phantasms," 



232 HOBBES [chap. 

religion is useful just so far as it promotes that end. 
We know nothing of God except His power ; and it is 
upon His power that His authority is founded. All 
the other attributes ascribed to him " are not to declare 
what He is," but how much we honour Him. " The end 
of worship among men is power." The worship of 
God is directed by " those rules of honour that reason 
dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent 
men in hope of benefit," or for fear of damage, or 
thankfulness for good received. Prayer and thanks 
are simply an acknowledgment of God's power. 
Eational worship "argues a fear of Him, and fear 
is a confession of His power." I will not ask 
whether Hobbes's theological conceptions would 
really justify even this account of religion. It 
comes apparently to this, that religion is a system of 
beliefs and observances imposed by the sovereign in 
order to give force to the " Law of Nature," that is, the 
law of self-preservation and the obligation of the social 
contract. Modern thinkers have given a good many 
definitions of religion; but this I fancy is not among 
them. 

Hobbes's purpose is clear enough. The Church, as he 
holds, is an organised body which has taken advantage 
of phantasms and dreams to claim supernatural powers 
and to forge a system of spiritual weapons capable of 
encountering the secular weapons of the sovereign. 
Then it has elaborated the sham philosophy of the 
schoolmen, the empusa which strangles thought by 
words and enables it to bewilder men by mysterious 
dogmas which are really nonsense. In attacking the 
Church, therefore, he is defending the cause of enlight- 
enment against a systematic obscurantism. He traces 



iv.] THE STATE 233 

the growth of the spiritual power through three stages : 
first the claim of priests to make belief obligatory 
instead of free ; secondly, the concentration of this 
power in the hands of bishops ; and thirdly, absorption 
of the episcopal in the papal power. Queen Elizabeth 
got rid of the pope ; the Presbyterians of the bishops ; 
and the Presbyterians have now lost their power, so 
that "we are reduced to the independency of the 
primitive Christians/' every man believing what he 
pleases. This, he says, "is perhaps the best," first, 
because there ought to be no power "over the con- 
sciences of men, but of the Word itself, working faith 
in every man ; " and secondly, because it is unreasonable 
to ask a man to accept the reasons of others, " which 
is little better than to venture his salvation at cross 
and pile." Priests ought to know that power is pre- 
served by the same virtues by which it is acquired — 
"that is to say, by wisdom, humility, clearness of 
doctrine, and sincerity of conversation; and not by 
suppression of the natural sciences and of the morality 
of natural reason ; nor by obscure language ; nor by 
arrogating to themselves more knowledge than they 
make appear ; nor by pious frauds ; " nor by other faults 
which tend to scandal. Hobbes would thus seem to be 
in favour of complete religious toleration and absolute 
indifference of the State in religious matters. How is 
this reconcilable with the theory that "religion is 
law ? " 

The explanation is not far to seek. The endless 
religious controversies had been made an argument 
on one side for the necessity of a central spiritual 
authority, and on the other for a limitation of the 
essentials of religious belief to the points upon which 



234 HOBBES [chap. 

all men were agreed. Hobbes having, in words at 
least, to accept the Christian doctrines, declares that 
the only article of faith " which the Scripture maketh 
simply necessary to salvation is this, that Jesus is the 
Christ " : an article which, as we have seen, he manipu- 
lates strangely enough. Other dogmas need not 
trouble us. "For it is with the mysteries of our 
religion as with wholesome pills for the sick ; which 
swallowed whole have the virtue to cure ; but chewed 
are for the most part cast up again without effect." 
Now when the State orders us to swallow, it will 
allow us to take our pills whole. The State, as he 
says, can only take notice of our words. It is one of 
the vital errors of the false teachers to " extend the 
power of the law to the very thoughts and consciences 
of men." That, he intimates, means the Inquisition, 
which he detests as heartily as any man. The only 
interest of the State is in peace. The secular 
sovereign will not want to rouse theological quarrels 
or to burn his subjects to enforce dogmas. Persecution 
is the natural consequence when a great corporation 
has been built up upon the ground of a dogmatic 
system, and when all its interests depend upon en- 
forcing orthodoxy. The destruction of such a power 
is Hobbes's real aim. If we subordinate the Church to 
the State, the secular sovereign will be no longer the 
tool of the priest, and, even if he prescribes the verbal 
acceptance of certain dogmas, he will take care that 
they do no harm. His aim will be to suppress contro- 
versy, not to hinder speculation. 

The doctrine of toleration was developing, though 
slowly enough, and Hobbes saw one difficulty clearly. 
If by "religion" we mean simply the creed of the 



iv.] THE STATE 235 

individual, the case for toleration is obvious and over- 
powering. It must be wrong, that is, to punish a man 
for accepting what he believes to be true. But a 
practical difficulty remains when " religion M is regarded 
as the creed of an organised body, which has therefore 
a system of laws. What is to be done when such laws 
come into conflict with the laws of the State ? The 
difficulty need not occur if as a matter of fact the 
Church and State do not represent conflicting theories, 
or if there be an agreement as to a demarcation of their 
spheres of action. But as religious motives affect 
men's conduct as a whole, the Church can hardly be 
indifferent to every part of the action of the State. 
When differences occur, as for example when the State 
undertakes the charge of education, there is even in our 
own day a great difficulty in applying the principle of 
toleration, however much it may be accepted in general 
terms. In Hobbes's time, such difficulties were of 
course much greater. The Puritan proposed to alter 
the constitution of the Church, but not to diminish its 
authority or to divorce it from the State. As sects 
multiplied, the principle of toleration became more 
widely accepted ; for it is plain that when you are in a 
minority of one your only logical plea for liberty must 
imply universal toleration. Meanwhile Hobbes, dis- 
gusted by the struggles of rival sects and the claims of 
the Catholic church to interfere with political matters 
in the interest of the hated dogmatic system, took a 
short cut to a solution. Instead of trying to effect a 
reconciliation, he would simply put one power under 
the feet of -the other, and the dominant power should 
be that which is least given to bigotry. 

In some respects Hobbes's solution was that which 



236 HOBBES [chap. iv. 

actually succeeded. The claim of the pope to depose 
kings was of little practical importance ; and Hobbes, 
like his countrymen, seems to have been unduly 
nervous. Giant Pope, though far from being so de- 
crepit as Bunyan thought, was ceasing to have much 
authority over the political world. The Church of 
England was following the course which Hobbes 
desired. He complains that the bishops made certain 
claims to independent authority, but remarks that at 
any rate they had practically submitted to the king. 
That tendency developed, and Hobbes would have 
been thoroughly content with the eighteenth century, 
when the Church ceased to make any claim to corporate 
power, and the clergy became useful dependants on the 
possessors of patronage. 



NOTE 

Durixg the last months of his life Sir Leslie Stephen 
was writing this book. When he could no longer work 
he asked me to see it through the press. Its readers 
should, I think, be told that he had some thoughts of 
adding to it a few sentences about the influence exer- 
cised by Hobbes on later philosophers, the French 
Encyclopaedists and the English Utilitarians, and 
that he gave me some notes, by the aid of which this 
addition might have been made. However, before his 
death I had sent him word that the book was so com- 
plete that no second hand ought to touch it. I have 
only made those small changes that must always be 
made whenever a book is printed. He expressly 
charged me to acknowledge his debt of gratitude to 
three of his precursors : his friend Croom Eobertson, 
Dr. F. Tonnies, and M. Georges Lyon. 

F. W. MAITLAND. 



237 



> 






INDEX 



A 

Advancement of Learning (Ba- 
con), 85. 

Althusius, Johannes, Politics of, 
177. 

Andrewes, Bishop, 179. 

Areopagitica (Milton), 69. 

Aristotle, 118, 191. 

Arlington, Lord, 60. 

Armada, The Spanish, 178. 

Athenss Oxonienses (Anthony 
Wood), 2. 

Aubrey, John, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 
12, 17, 25, 34, 37, 46, 48, 49, 57, 
60, 61, 65, 66. 

Augustine, St., 160. 

Austin, John, 207, 208. 

Autobiography, Hobbes's, 2. 

Ayton, Sir Robert, 11, 12. 



Bacon, 1, 12, 13, 58, 61, 67, 76, 85. 
Behemoth, 4, 26, 29, 30, 60. 
Bellarmine, Cardinal, 179, 229. 
Bentham, Jeremy, 124, 207. 
Berkeley, Bishop, 79, 99. 
Blount, Charles, 68-9. 
Bodies, Properties of, 99. 
Boyle, Robert, 51, 54, 76. 
Bramhall, Bishop, 36, 50, 150, 151, 

154, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 

166, 167, 168, 169, 170. 
Brief Lives (Aubrey), 2. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 72. 



Buchanan, George, 58. 
Buckle, Henry T., 86. 
Budget of Paradoxes (de Mor- 
gan), 55. 
Bunyan, John, 236. 
Burnet, Bishop, 60. 



Calvin, 160. 

Calvinism, 160. 

Cambridge, University of, 51, 60. 

Catholicism, Roman, 30, 178, 179. 

Cause and Effect, 101 seq. 

Cavendish, William, 1st Earl of 

Devonshire, 6, 7. 
Cavendish Family, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 

15, 16, 19, 20, 36, 37, 38, 43, 46. 
Charles I., 27, 28, 186,197. 
II., 39, 41, 45, 57, 58, 59, 60, 

67, 231. 
Chatsworth, 7, 14. 
Chillingworth, William, 25. 
Christianity, 78. 

Church and State, 116seq. t 222 seq. 
Circle, Squaring the, 52-6. 
Clarendon, Lord, 24-5, 26, 37, 41, 

42, 56, 60. 
Clinton, Sir George, 16. 
Cluverius's Historia Universalis, 

61. 
Coke, Sir Edward, 61, 206. 
Collins, Anthony, 69. 
Cominges, Comte de, 58. 
Comte, 155. 
Condillac, 94. 



239 



240 



HOBBES 



Constitution, The British, 193. 
Cooper, Samuel (miniature 

painter), 58. 
Copernicus, 77, 79. 
Cosin, Bishop, 40, 45. 
Cowley, 46, 47, 48. 
Cromwell. Oliver, 3, 41, 42, 198. 

D 

Davenant, Sir William, 46, 47. 

Decameron Physiologicwn, 55. 

Be Cive, 34, 35, 37, 39, 42, 78, 150, 
173, 182, 190, 194, 201, 207, 220, 
222. 

Be Corpore, 50, 52, 66, 70, 77, 79, 
87, 88, 95, 98, 105, 114, 149, 150. 

Be Corpore Politico, 114, 173, 182. 

Definitions, 92 seq. 

Be Homine, 114. 

De Quincey, 15. 

Descartes, 20, 21, 32, 33, 37, 38, 65, 
78, 81, 82, 91, 98, 107, 111, 146. 

Determinism, 157 seq. 

Devonshire, Earls of, see Caven- 
dish. 

Bialogue upon the Common Law, 
61, 193, 206. 

Bioptrique (Descartes), 33. 

Divinity, The Schoolmen's, 78. 

Donne, John, 179. 

Dort, Synod of, 158, 159, 160. 

Dreams, 115 seq. 

Dry den, 67. 

Du Verdus, 36. 

E 

Eachard, 68. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 159. 
Effect, Cause and, 101 seq. 
Elizabeth, Queen, 233. 
Ethics (Spinoza), 122. 



Falkland, Lord, 25, 26. 
Farquhar's Constant Couple, 68. 



Fell, Dr., 2. 
Filmer, Sir Robert, 49. 
Final causes, 102 seq. 
Freewill, 157-72. 

G 

Galileo, 20, 21, 22,77, 79, 111] 125. 

Gassendi, 20, 24, 35, 37, 40, 45, 78. 

Geometry, 79-81. 

Gierke, Professor, 177. 

Gladstone, 203. 

God, Existence of, 146 ; attributes 

of, 147 seq. 
Godolphin, Sidney, 25, 37, 38. 
Gondibert (Davenant), 46, 48. 
Grotius, 49, 177. 

H 

Hales, John, 25. 

Hamilton, Sir William, 85, 148. 

Hammond, Henry, 25. 

Hampden, John, 199. 

Harnack's What is Christianity f 
230. 

Hartley, David, 118. 

Harvey, William, 48, 78, 79, 81, 
111. 

Henry VIII., 6, 178. 

Heylin, Peter, 20. 

History of the Sabbath (Heylin), 
20. 

Hobbes, Thomas, his autobiog- 
raphy, 2; family history and 
birth, 3; school, 4; goes to 
Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 4; 
youthful pursuits, 6; tutor to 
the Cavendish family, 6-8 ; long 
connection with the family, 8; 
makes the grand tour, 8 ; trans- 
lates Thucydides, 9, 12 ; friend- 
ship with eminent men, 11, 12, 
13; death of his patron, 15; 
travels with another pupil, 16 ; 
first acquaintance with Euclid, 
17, 70, 71, 77, 80; inquiries into 



I 



INDEX 



241 



the nature of motion, 18, 21, 77, 
78, 80; devotes himself seri- 
ously to philosophy, 19 ; renews 
his connection with the Caven- 
family, 19, 20; further 
Is, 20; recognised by con- 
^ <! .mporary philosophers, 20; 
new acquaintances at home 
and abroad, 20, 21, 25; circu- 
lates summary of his philo- 
sophical ideas, 27 ; goes to 
France for greater safety, 27 ; 
controversy with Descartes, 
33; publishes Be Cive, 34; be- 
gins to write The Leviathan, 
34; tutor to the exiled Prince 
of Wales, 38; severe illness, 
40; publication of The Levia- 
than, 40; returns to England, 
41, 45; accused of inconsis- 
tency and disloyalty, 41, 42, 
43, 54; suspected of atheism, 
44, 45, 59, 60, 67-9, 144, 150, 154 ; 
makes acquaintance of various 
distinguished men, 46-49; con- 
troversy with Bishop Bram- 
hall, 50 ; publishes De Corpore, 
50 ; attempts to square the cir- 
cle, 52, 53, 55 ; attacks the uni- 
versities, 51-7 ; controversy 
with John Wallis, 52-5; be- 
comes a favourite at Court, 
58 ; receives a pension of £100 
a year from Charles II., 59 ; ex- 
amination and suppression of 
his writings ordered, 59, 60; 
his fame abroad, 61 ; writes a 
long Latin poem in his eightieth 
year, 61 ; publishes Decameron 
Phynolorjiciun in his ninetieth 
year, 55; produces a work on 
Common Law, 61 ; translates 
the Iliad and Odyssey, 62; 
death, 63 ; starting-point of his 
philosophical speculations, 73, 
74, 84; aim of his philosophy, 



84; subject of philosophy, 84; 
theory of the universe, 72 seq., 
80 seq. ; divergence from Des- 
cartes's views, 81-2; theory of 
logic, 87 seq.; physical science, 
98 seq. ; psychology, 109 seq. ; 
theology, 144 seq. ; freewill, 
157 seq.; political system, 173 
seq. ; his doctrine of motion, 
18, 21, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84 passim ; 
materialism of his philosophy, 
82, 98 ; philosophical methods, 
12, 13; ethical theories, 21; 
hostility to established beliefs, 
75 ; attitude towards the spirit- 
ual authorities, 29-32, 34, 45, 
57, 75; heterodox views, 76; 
comparison of Hobbes with 
Bacon, 12, 13; resemblance 
between Hobbes and Herbert 
Spencer, 73 ; a great thinker, 1 ; 
a born logician, 70 ; Euclid his 
type of reasoning, 88 ; failure as 
a mathematician, 53; intellec- 
tual energy and boldness, 55, 
56, 61, 62; personal timidity, 
56, 156; shortcomings, 65; con- 
temporary estimate of him, 67 ; 
general opposition aroused by 
his views, 67 ; his one-sidedness, 
71 ; idiosyncrasies, intellectual 
and moral, 70 ; his unemotional 
nature, 72; dogmatic and ag- 
gressive methods, 77; views 
of love, 132; cynical views of 
human nature, 139; style, 9, 
10, 117 ; favourite authors, 65 ; 
personal attractiveness, 23-4; 
sincerity of his friendship, 23, 
24; personal appearance and 
habits, 63-4 ; devotion to music 
and tennis, 64. 

Hobbes, Thomas (father), 3, 4. 

Mrs. (mother), 3, 4. 

John (brother), 4. 

Francis (uncle), 4. 



242 



HOBBES 



"Hobbism," 74, 146. 
Hoeffding, Professor, 84. 
Human Mature, 108, 114, 120, 

123, 127, 132, 139. 
Hume, 99, 118, 229. 
Huxley, 81. 
Huygens, 58, 59. 



Ideas, Association of, 118-19. 
Imagination, 107, 115. 
Infinite, The, 109, 149. 



James I., 7, 8, 179. 
Johnson, Samuel, 201. 
Jonson, Ben, 11, 12. 
Jowett, Benjamin, 10. 



Kenneth, 61. 

Kepler, 78. 

Kings, Divine right of, 179 seq. 



Language, 92. 

Laud, Archbishop, 31. 

Laughter, 130, 131. 

Law, Moral, 214 seq. 

Leibnitz, 52. 

Leighton, Archbishop, 24. 

Leviathan, The, 1, 2, 32, 34, 36, 
38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 59, 60, 61, 65, 
68, 69, 73, 8^114, 120, 127, 132, 
136, 150, 154, 173, 182, 193, 195, 
199, 206, 207, 211, 212, 220, 223. 

the Great, 182, 183, 192, 194, 

195, 196, 197, 200, 204, 212. 

Lewes, G. H., 117. 

Lilburne, John, 206. 

Locke, John, 1, 67. 

Logic, 87-97. 

Longomontanus, 38. 

Louis XIV., 59, 198. 



M 

Machiavelli, 185. 

Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 4, 5. 

Maine, Sir Henry, 61, 207. 

Malmesbury, 3. 

Mansel, Henry, 148. 

Man waring, Bishop, 28. 

Mare Clausum (Selden), 20. 

Mary, Queen of Scots, 178. 

Meditations (Descartes), 32, 81, 
82. 

Meditationes Sacrae (Bacon) , 85. 

Memory, 107. 

Mersenne, Marin, 21, 22, 23, 24, 32, 
33, 35, 38, 40, 45, 56, 67, 78. 

Method (Descartes), 32. 

Mill, John, 94. 

Milton, 21, 24, 49, 58, 157, 158, 
205. 

Miracles, 228. 

Molesworth's edition of Hobbes's 
Works, 70. 

" Monarchomachist " contro- 
versy, 178. 

Montaigne, 67. 

Montesquieu, 193. 

More, Sir Thomas, 58. 

Morley, Bishop, 25. 

Motion, Nature of, 18, 21, 77, 78, 
80-1, 84. 

N 

Names, 89-90. 

Natural History of Religion 

(Hume), 155. 
Nature, Law of, 173 seq., 186, 187, 

188, 189, 191, 208, 215. 

State of, 185 seq. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 52, 111. 
Nicholas, Sir Edward, 43, 44. 



One-sidedness, 71. 
Oxford, 4, 5, 51, 52. 



INDEX 



243 



Paine, Thomas, 206. 

Papacy, The, 30, 178, 179, 221 seq., 

229, 230, 235, 236. 
Pascal, 67. 
Passions, 125 seq. 
Pepys, Samuel, 60. 
Petty, Sir William, 37, 51. 
Phenomena, Natural, 109 seq. 
Place, 100. 
Politics, Hobbes's System of, 173 

seq. 
Pollock, Sir Frederic, 122. 
Presbyterianism, 31. 
Psychology, 114 seq. 
Punishment, Eternal, 170-1. 
Puritans, The, 5, 30. 
Pym, John, 203. 

R 

Ravaillac, 178. 

Richelieu, 17. 

Rights of Man (Paine), 206. 

Robertson,. Croom, 12, 55. 

Rochefoucauld, 139. 

Rousseau, 13. 

Royal Society, The, 51, 52, 54, 76. 



Savile, Sir Henry, 51. 

Scargill, 60. 

Science, Physical, 73, 75, 76, 82, 

98, 113. 
Selden, John, 20, 48, 49. 
Self-preservation, 189 seq. 
Sensation, 18. 
Sense, 106-7. 
Seven Problems, 231. 
Sheldon, Bishop, 25. 
Sorbiere, 13, 35, 58, 59. 
Sordello (Browning), 136. 
Sovereignty, 181, 186, 192 seq. 
Space, 98-9. 
Spencer, Herbert, 73, 122, 148. 



Spinoza, 100, 101, 122, 156, 228. 

Spirits, 83. 

Spiritual Power, 220 seq. 

Sprat, 13. 

Stewart, Dugald, 85, 94. 

Suarez, 179. 

Sully, Professor, 131. 

Swift, 5. 



Table Talk (Selden), 49. 

Tenison, Archbishop, 15. 

Testament, The Old, 226. 

The New, 227. 

Thought, 84, 87-8. 

Thucydides, Hobbes's Transla- 
tion of, 9, 10, 12. 

Time, 98-9. 

Toland, John, 69. 

Toleration, Religious, 233 seq. 

Tolstoi, 202. 

Tonnies, Dr., 18, 55. 

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 
(Spinoza), 156, 228. 

Truth, 87. 

Tyrannicide, 178. 

U 

Universities, The, 19, 50, 51, 52. 



Venice, Constitution of, 17. 
Voltaire, 66. 

W 

Waller, Edmund, 16, 37, 40,46, 48. 
Wallis, John, 41, 42, 52, 53, 54, 88. 
Warburton, William, 69. 
Ward, Bishop, 51, 53. 
Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 16. 
White, Thomas, 59, 60. 
Wood, Anthony, 2. 
Words, 89-90. 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 51. 



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